AI tools for sell-side investment banking

AI has fundamentally reshaped how investment banks execute deals. What started as a handful of experimental tools has matured into a core part of the modern banking workflow — from research and pitchbook creation to due diligence and deal marketing. Today, AI-powered platforms can draft entire CIM sections, analyze data rooms in minutes, pull institutional-grade financial data on demand, and even operate autonomously across multi-step workflows.

The impact is tangible. Junior bankers who once spent the bulk of their time on repetitive grunt work — formatting slides, compiling market data, transcribing calls — are now handling two to three times more live deals. Senior bankers are walking into pitches with deeper market intelligence gathered in hours rather than days. And boutique firms are competing with bulge brackets on execution speed and output quality, without adding headcount.

But the real story isn't just about speed. The latest generation of AI tools — Claude with its investment banking plugins and institutional data connectors, Perplexity's Finance platform, dedicated financial AI platforms like Rogo — are purpose-built for the kind of complex, data-intensive work that defines sell-side banking. They don't just automate tasks; they enhance the depth and quality of analysis.

This guide covers the AI tools that matter most for sell-side investment banking professionals today. We'll examine each tool's capabilities, strengths, and practical applications — from client pitching and onboarding to deal marketing and document creation. Whether you're at a boutique shop or a mid-market firm, you'll find actionable ways to integrate these tools into your daily workflow.

What to Expect

Throughout this guide, we'll:

• Compare various AI tools and their specific applications in investment banking
• Highlight key benefits, including time savings and workflow optimizations
• Provide practical recommendations for integrating these tools into your daily work
• Share real-world examples of how these tools can transform deal execution
• Introduce specialized solutions designed specifically for investment banking workflows

Whether you're a seasoned banker looking to modernize your practice or a junior professional seeking to maximize your efficiency, this guide will help you build an AI toolkit that becomes a genuine competitive advantage.

Perplexity AI: Your Real-Time Research Assistant

Perplexity is your always-on research analyst — an intelligent search engine that doesn't just find information but understands what you're looking for and delivers concise, sourced answers you can trust. It has evolved well beyond a simple search tool into a comprehensive research platform for finance professionals.

How It Shines in Banking Work

When you're in the thick of client pitching or document preparation, Perplexity becomes invaluable. Imagine you need quick facts about M&A activity in the fintech sector — instead of spending an hour digging through various websites, you can ask Perplexity directly and get an immediate, sourced answer. This is particularly useful when:

• Gathering market statistics for pitch decks
• Finding recent transaction comparables
• Verifying industry trends for Confidential Information Memoranda (CIMs)
• Doing quick background checks on potential clients or competitors

During client onboarding, you can rapidly pull together background information about a client's industry or competitive landscape, making your strategy meetings more informed and productive.

Perplexity Finance

Perplexity now offers a dedicated finance hub — Perplexity Finance — with stock price charts, company financials, market insights, ETF holdings, and screener tools. At $200/month for the Finance tier, some commentators have called it a credible alternative to the $30,000/year Bloomberg Terminal for bankers who need market data without the full terminal. It's particularly useful for boutique banks that need quick access to company data and market trends without enterprise-grade terminal subscriptions.

Model Council and Perplexity Computer

Two other features worth highlighting for banking professionals:

• Model Council runs three frontier models simultaneously (e.g., Claude, Gemini, Grok), compares their outputs, and delivers a higher-confidence answer. This is particularly useful for investment research where model bias could be costly — if all three models agree on a market trend or data point, you can be more confident in the result.
• Perplexity Computer coordinates multiple AI models to operate as a general-purpose digital worker. It can handle multi-step finance workflows autonomously — from web research to data analysis to generating spreadsheets and reports — running in the background for hours if needed.

A word of caution: Perplexity is only as good as its sources. We have found that it often references sources that are not up to date, of questionable quality, or are not relevant to the question. Always verify before using in client materials.

Google Deep Research: Your Strategic Analysis Partner

Google's Deep Research (called "Deep Research AI" by many in the industry) is available through Google's Gemini and takes a fundamentally different approach to research. Rather than returning quick answers, it creates a research plan, executes it systematically, and delivers a comprehensive report with key findings and direct links to sources. Think of it as a more thoughtful, thorough version of Perplexity that takes its time before responding.

Deep Research now supports file and image uploads, so you can feed it proprietary client materials alongside public market data. It also integrates with your Google Workspace — pulling context from Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Chat — and can output reports into interactive Canvas documents for easy repurposing into client-ready materials. Best of all, Deep Research is now available for free on Gemini 2.5 Flash, making it accessible to anyone.

Making Complex Research Simple

Let's say you're preparing a pitch for a healthcare tech client. Instead of spending days gathering market intelligence, you could ask Gemini + Deep Research to "analyze the key growth drivers, recent M&A deals, and competitive landscape in healthcare AI startups." Within minutes, you'll get a detailed report covering all these aspects, complete with verifiable sources.

The tool really shines when you need:

• In-depth market analysis for pitch materials
• Comprehensive industry overviews for CIMs
• Understanding emerging trends affecting your client's sector
• Building out the "Industry Overview" section of your documents

The output isn't just a collection of facts – it's a structured analysis that can form the backbone of your client materials. According to industry data, this type of AI-powered research can compress what used to be days of work into mere hours, allowing deal teams to focus on higher-value activities.

Real-World Application

Consider this scenario: You've just landed a meeting with a potential client in the renewable energy sector. Instead of scrambling to gather background information, you can:

1. Use Deep Research to generate a comprehensive overview of the renewables market
2. Get up to speed on recent deals and valuations in the space
3. Identify key trends and growth drivers to reference in your pitch
4. Back up every point with credible sources

The result? You walk into the meeting with deep industry knowledge and concrete data points, all gathered in a fraction of the traditional time.

What makes Deep Research particularly valuable is its ability to tackle multi-faceted questions. When you need to understand complex market dynamics or interconnected trends, it can piece together information from various sources to give you a complete picture. This isn't just faster than traditional research – it often uncovers connections and insights that might have been missed in manual research.

Similarly to Perplexity, Deep Research is only as good as its sources. We have found that it often references sources that are not up to date, of questionable quality, or are not relevant to the question. Always verify the sources and use your own judgement.

Sign up for Gemini to try it out.

ChatGPT Pro: Your Content Creation Powerhouse

ChatGPT Pro, powered by GPT-5.2, is both an analyst and a copywriter — capable of deep research, polished content creation, and sophisticated artifact generation including spreadsheets and documents. For banking professionals, it's one of the most versatile tools in the stack.

The Deep Research Advantage

ChatGPT Pro's Deep Research mode acts as an autonomous research agent. Give it a complex prompt like "Survey the recent trends in renewable energy M&A and summarize the outlook," and it'll spend several minutes searching the web, analyzing reports, and producing a detailed analysis that reads like it came from a seasoned professional. You can now focus Deep Research on specific websites and connected apps as trusted sources, and create and edit research plans before they begin — giving you more control over the quality and relevance of outputs.

Practical Applications in Banking

In day-to-day banking work, ChatGPT Pro proves its worth in countless ways:

For Client Pitching:

• Draft compelling executive summaries that capture your client's unique value proposition
• Create detailed buyer profiles with recent acquisition history and strategic fit analysis
• Generate industry overviews that combine market data with strategic insights

For Document Preparation:

• Transform bullet points into polished investment highlights
• Convert technical jargon into clear, compelling narratives
• Draft responses to buyer questions during due diligence

The real game-changer is how it handles complex tasks. Industry data suggests that using AI tools like ChatGPT can reduce document preparation time by up to 70%. Instead of spending hours crafting the perfect paragraph about market positioning, you can have ChatGPT generate several versions and pick the best one – or combine elements from different versions to create exactly what you need.

We could also see this being used to produce marketing assets such as in-depth industry reports, which are a great way to stand out from the crowd and add value for clients. Indeed, the first draft of this post was produced using ChatGPT Pro and then edited by hand. And - from first hand experience - we would add that, like Perplexity and Gemini, ChatGPT Pro is only as good as its sources. We have found that it often references sources that are not up to date, of questionable quality, or are not relevant to the question. Always verify the sources and use your own judgement.

For enterprise teams, ChatGPT now supports in-region data residency for Google Drive and GitHub integrations, addressing a key compliance concern for banks operating across jurisdictions.

Sign up for ChatGPT Pro to try it out.

Claude: Your Document Analysis Expert

Claude, by Anthropic, has become the go-to AI platform for institutional finance work. With its latest model (Claude Opus 4.6) processing up to 1 million tokens at once, it can read and analyze entire data rooms in minutes. But what sets Claude apart today isn't just its raw capability — it's the ecosystem Anthropic has built specifically for finance.

Why Claude Stands Out

Claude's Cowork platform now includes a dedicated investment banking plugin that can review transaction documents, build comparable company analyses, and prepare pitch materials. Additional finance plugins cover equity research, private equity, financial analysis, and wealth management. Critically, these plugins include connectors to FactSet, MSCI, S&P Global, and LSEG — meaning Claude can pull institutional-grade data directly into its analysis workflows.

The Goldman Sachs partnership underscores the institutional credibility: Goldman deployed Claude-based AI agents for accounting, compliance, and client onboarding, with Anthropic engineers embedded at the firm for six months. The result was a 30% reduction in client onboarding times and a 20%+ boost in developer productivity.

Beyond the enterprise features, Claude's core strengths remain best-in-class for banking work:

• Process and analyze extensive documents in one go
• Maintain consistency across long-form content
• Extract key insights while preserving important details
• Understand and interpret charts and graphs within documents
• Carry context from Excel to PowerPoint without losing session state during multi-step workflows

Claude is also known for its ability to write in a more human-like way than other AI models — a real asset when you need to draft documents that read naturally.

Real Investment Banking Applications

Here's where Claude really shines:

During Due Diligence:

• Feed it an entire data room and ask for key findings or red flags
• Have it summarize multiple financial reports while highlighting trends
• Extract relevant information from lengthy contracts or technical documents

For Document Creation:

• Write and refine entire sections of CIMs while maintaining consistency
• Review complete pitch decks for messaging alignment
• Generate comprehensive executive summaries that tie together multiple data sources

For Quality Control:

• Review documents for internal consistency
• Cross-reference facts and figures across multiple sections
• Ensure messaging remains aligned throughout long documents

The practical impact is significant. Instead of having junior bankers spend days reading through documents, Claude can process everything quickly and highlight what matters most. This means your team can focus on analyzing the insights rather than just gathering them.

A Day in the Life Example

Imagine you're starting work on a new sell-side mandate. You receive a folder with:

• 100 pages of financial statements
• 50 pages of market research
• 30 pages of technical product documentation
• 20 pages of customer contracts

Instead of diving into each document separately, you can feed everything to Claude and ask for:

1. A summary of key financial metrics and trends
2. Major market opportunities identified in the research
3. Key product differentiators
4. Notable terms or restrictions in customer contracts

Within minutes, you have a comprehensive overview that would have taken days to compile manually. More importantly, Claude can then help draft these insights into various sections of your CIM or pitch deck, maintaining consistency and accuracy throughout.

The enterprise Cowork plugins are currently available to Claude Enterprise customers.

Sign up for Claude to try it out.

Poe: Your AI Model Command Center

Poe is your Swiss Army knife for AI tools — a platform that gives you access to all the major AI models (including GPT-5.2, Gemini, Claude Opus, and DeepSeek) in one clean interface. Instead of managing separate subscriptions and jumping between different websites, you can switch between AI assistants as easily as switching between chat conversations.

Why Bankers Love It

The real value of Poe lies in its flexibility and comparison capabilities. You might find that:

• GPT-5.2 writes the most sophisticated investment highlights
• Claude excels at analyzing long documents
• DeepSeek is surprisingly strong for quantitative analysis
• Gemini integrates best with your Google Workspace

With Poe, you can leverage each model's strengths without managing multiple applications. The platform now supports group chats for up to 200 users, making it useful for deal teams that want to collaborate with AI models in a shared workspace. And with a compute-points pricing model, you only pay for what you use rather than subscribing to every platform separately.

Practical Applications

Let's say you're drafting a critical section of a CIM. You could:

1. Get a first draft from GPT-5.2
2. Have Claude review it for consistency with earlier sections
3. Use another model to polish the language
4. Compare all versions to pick the best elements of each

Poe also lets you create custom Poe Apps — lightweight AI-powered tools built on top of its model library. For banking teams, this means you can build purpose-specific assistants (e.g., a CIM section drafter or a comp table analyzer) without any engineering work.

Sign up for Poe to try it out.

NotebookLM: Your Personal Deal Room Assistant

NotebookLM takes a different approach to AI assistance. Instead of working with general knowledge, it becomes an expert on your specific sources — perfectly memorizing every document, web page, or video you share, and answering questions exclusively from that material. Powered by Gemini 3.1 Pro with a 1 million token context window, it can now handle massive source collections that mirror the scale of real deal rooms.

What Makes It Special

The key difference is that NotebookLM grounds all its responses in your uploaded documents. This means:

• You can curate your own sources and share them with the AI
• Every answer comes directly from your source materials — no hallucinated facts
• Interactive audio summaries let you produce podcast-style overviews of your sources, and you can now ask questions and steer the conversation in real time
• Data tables let you organize and query structured data extracted from your sources
• A Deep Research toggle enables multi-step research workflows within your source library

Banking Use Cases

NotebookLM really shines during:

Deal Preparation:

• Upload all client materials and quickly extract key information
• Find specific details across multiple documents instantly
• Generate summaries (including audio summaries) that you know are based on actual client data
• Use data tables to pull structured financials from uploaded statements

Due Diligence:

• Analyze large sets of client documents for key insights
• Cross-reference information across multiple sources
• Quickly find answers to specific questions within vast documentation

Document Creation:

• Draft sections of pitch books using verified client information
• Ensure accuracy of client descriptions and claims
• Create fact-based market positioning statements

NotebookLM is now also integrated with the broader Gemini ecosystem, making it easy to move between research in NotebookLM and content creation in Gemini.

Sign up for NotebookLM to try it out.

Grain: Your Meeting Memory Bank

If you've ever wished you could perfectly remember every detail from every client call, Grain is your solution. It's an AI-powered meeting recorder and analyzer that turns your conversations into searchable, shareable content.

Key Features in Practice

When you're running client calls or management presentations, Grain:

• Records and transcribes everything automatically
• Creates AI-generated summaries of key points
• Lets you easily clip and share important moments
• Provides a searchable database of all meeting content

Real Banking Benefits

The practical impact on your workflow is significant:

During Client Meetings:

• Focus on the conversation instead of taking notes
• Create perfect records of every client statement
• Easily share key moments with your team
• Never miss important details

For Deal Documentation:

• Pull exact quotes for CIMs and pitch books
• Create accurate meeting summaries in minutes
• Build comprehensive Q&A logs from buyer calls
• Maintain detailed records of all client interactions

At Deliverables, we have found that transcripts from client calls are a great input for generating CIMs and pitch books. There are many similar services out there — Fathom, Fireflies, tl;dv, and Otter are all competitive alternatives — but Grain remains our top pick for banking teams because of its SOC 2 compliance, clean interface, and the quality of its AI-generated summaries. Security and confidentiality are non-negotiable when recording client conversations, and Grain handles this well.

Sign up for Grain to try it out.

Wispr Flow: Your Voice-to-Document Accelerator

Sometimes speaking is faster than typing, and that's where Wispr Flow comes in. It's an AI-powered dictation tool that turns your spoken words into polished written content — up to three times faster than typing. Now available on both desktop and Android (with 30% faster dictation speeds and support for 100+ languages), Wispr Flow has become a go-to tool for bankers who need to produce content quickly on the move.

When to Use It

Wispr Flow is particularly valuable when:

• You're brainstorming ideas for a pitch
• You need to draft quick emails or memos
• You're reviewing documents and want to add comments
• You're multitasking and can't type
• You're tired of typing after a long day

Banking Applications

Consider these scenarios:

Quick Content Creation:

• Dictate initial drafts of CIM sections while reviewing materials
• Speak out email responses between meetings
• Create meeting summaries while they're fresh in your mind
• Draft presentation talking points on the go

Document Review:

• Voice-annotate documents during review
• Dictate feedback on draft materials
• Create revision notes while reading

The beauty of Wispr Flow is that it maintains your natural writing style while capturing your thoughts at speaking speed. This can be a game-changer during crunch times when you need to produce content quickly but don't want to sacrifice quality.

While Wispr Flow runs on their private cloud and the data is encrypted during transit and at rest, you may want to check their security practices before using it.

Sign up for Wispr Flow to try it out.

Rogo: Your AI Financial Analyst

Rogo is a purpose-built AI platform for finance professionals — and it's rapidly becoming a staple at major advisory firms. Backed by $75 million in Series C funding, Rogo is used daily by over 25,000 professionals at firms including Lazard, Jefferies, and Rothschild. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, Rogo was designed from the ground up for financial workflows.

What Makes It Different

Rogo's core advantage is its access to financial data and its integration with the tools bankers already use:

• Searches 50M+ financial documents including SEC filings, earnings transcripts, broker research, and market data — far deeper than what general-purpose AI tools can access
• Integrates directly with Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, so you can pull AI-generated analysis into your existing workflows without copy-pasting
• Understands financial context — it knows what an LBO model is, how to read a 10-K, and what a comp table should look like

Banking Applications

Rogo is particularly strong for:

Research and Analysis:

• Pull comparable company data and transaction comps with natural language queries
• Generate industry overviews grounded in broker research and SEC filings
• Answer complex financial questions with cited sources from institutional-grade data

Document Creation:

• Draft sections of pitch materials with data pulled directly from financial databases
• Build comp tables and populate them with verified data points
• Generate investment highlights backed by recent earnings transcripts and filings

Due Diligence:

• Search through vast document sets for specific clauses, financial metrics, or risk factors
• Cross-reference management commentary across multiple earnings calls
• Flag material changes in financial performance or business strategy

For boutique and mid-market banks that don't have the budget for a full-suite data terminal, Rogo fills an important gap — providing institutional-grade financial AI at a fraction of the cost.

Sign up for Rogo to try it out.

Key Benefits for Investment Banking Users

Let's talk about what these AI tools can actually do for you and your team in practical terms. The benefits go way beyond just saving time – though that alone is pretty impressive.

Transforming Your Time Management

The most immediate impact you'll notice is how much time these tools save you. Tasks that used to eat up your entire day can now be handled in a fraction of the time. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Time Savings in Action

• That market overview section that used to take half your day? AI can draft it in minutes, leaving you time to focus on the analysis that really matters
• No more spending hours transcribing meeting notes – Grain handles that automatically
• Instead of manually updating countless market data slides, AI tools can pull and format the data quickly

Industry data shows that these tools can save 20+ hours per deal cycle and reduce deal preparation time by up to 70%. Think about what that means: work that used to take a week might now take just two days. For boutique banks especially, this means being able to handle more mandates without burning out your team.

The Ripple Effect

When you're spending less time on routine tasks, you can:

• Take on more deals without increasing headcount
• Spend more time on strategic thinking and client relationships
• Respond to client requests faster
• Give junior bankers more time for meaningful analysis instead of grunt work

Quality and Consistency Improvements

Time savings are great, but what about quality? This is where AI tools really shine – they help produce more accurate, consistent work across your entire deal process.

How AI Enhances Accuracy

• AI doesn't get tired or make typos after a long day
• Tools like Claude can cross-reference information across entire documents instantly
• Multiple AI models can check each other's work through platforms like Poe
• Every fact can be verified with sources through tools like Perplexity

Real-World Impact

Imagine you're working on a CIM. Instead of worrying whether the growth rate mentioned on page 5 matches what's in the financial section, you can have AI tools verify consistency across the entire document. They'll catch:

• Mismatched numbers
• Inconsistent terminology
• Varying descriptions of the same concept
• Missing cross-references

Focusing on What Really Matters

Perhaps the biggest benefit is how these tools free you up to focus on the high-value aspects of banking that truly require human judgment and expertise.

What You Can Do More Of

• Strategic thinking about positioning and deal structure
• Building and maintaining client relationships
• Conducting thoughtful valuation analysis
• Developing creative solutions to complex problems
• Mentoring junior team members

What AI Handles

• Initial research and data gathering
• First drafts of documents
• Meeting transcription and summarization
• Fact-checking and consistency reviews
• Basic Q&A during due diligence

Practical Workflow Integration

The real magic happens when you integrate these tools into your daily workflow. Here's how that might look:

Morning Prep

• Use Deep Research to gather overnight market updates
• Have Claude summarize any new client documents
• Let Grain create summaries of yesterday's calls
• Use Wispr Flow to dictate your to-do list while reviewing materials

Deal Work

• Use AI to draft initial sections of pitch books and CIMs
• Pull comp data and transaction precedents with Rogo
• Have different AI models review and refine each other's work
• Use NotebookLM to quickly find specific information in client documents
• Let AI handle first-pass responses to buyer questions

Team Collaboration

• Share AI-generated meeting summaries with the team
• Use AI to ensure consistency across different team members' work
• Leverage AI for quick fact-checking during internal reviews
• Create AI-assisted status updates and progress reports

Scaling Your Capabilities

For boutique and middle-market banks, these tools effectively give you the capabilities of a much larger team. You can:

• Handle more deals simultaneously
• Respond to clients faster
• Produce higher-quality work consistently
• Compete with larger banks on execution

According to industry data, junior bankers using AI tools effectively are handling two to three times more live deals than they could a year ago. This isn't about replacing bankers — it's about making each banker more effective.

The Bottom Line

The combination of these AI tools creates a force multiplier for your team. You get:

• Dramatic time savings on routine tasks
• More consistent, accurate work product
• Faster response times to client requests
• More time for strategic thinking and client relationships
• The ability to handle a larger deal flow without burning out

These tools are most effective when they're supporting skilled bankers who know how to leverage them properly. They're not replacing your judgment – they're freeing you up to use that judgment more effectively.

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Deliverables.ai: Your AI-Powered Deal Room

Deliverables.ai is a specialized tool that takes the best features of the AI tools we've discussed and puts them together in a single, easy-to-use platform. It's like having a team of expert analysts at your fingertips, ready to help you with any task.

Get a demo of Deliverables.ai to try it out. You can also see how we compare to ChatGPT, Gamma, and other tools for investment banking workflows.