LSEG Joins Hands with Microsoft to Develop Generative AI Models

The London Stock Exchange Group is working with Microsoft and several banks to create bespoke generative artificial intelligence models in a move that shows how the financial services industry is looking to harness the technology without exposing proprietary data.

David Schwimmer, chief executive of LSEG, said the company was working with Microsoft to create "bespoke large language models". 

"We are having conversations with customers about the opportunity for them to use the vast amount of data we have available, to commingle that with their data in a secure proprietary [manner]," he said, as the exchange and data group reported first-half results on Thursday.

Microsoft took a 4 per cent stake in LSEG in December last year and secured a board seat as part of a 10-year strategic partnership, marking the latest in a series of incursions by Big Tech into the operation of global capital markets. Seattle-based Microsoft also invested $10bn in OpenAI in January.

Schwimmer said generative AI was useful "if you are a big bank that has a lot of proprietary data that you want to use and get access to . . . for your own trading strategies, risk management".
Banks were interested in creating their own generative AI models because they "want to make sure that none of [their] data is being used to inform any other large language models out there", he added. Schwimmer did not name the companies that LSEG is working with.

The UK exchange operator, which is suffering from a dearth of listings in London, regards AI-related products as a potential new business line. LSEG has pushed deep into the financial data business since its $27bn acquisition of Refinitiv.

(Source: Financial Times)