AI search engine startup Perplexity AI announced on Thursday the launch of its SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) document access feature, aimed at making complex financial data more understandable for a wide range of investors, from students to advisors and even day traders.
The SEC/EDGAR integration enables users to directly query financial documents within Perplexity's platform across multiple interfaces such as Search, Research, and Lab. The answers provided are accompanied by citations and references, allowing users to trace back to the original documents. This feature is designed to simplify complex reports that typically require specialized knowledge or expensive tools to interpret.
In its blog post, Perplexity noted: "Everyone should be able to access the same financial information driving professional investment decisions." This reflects a contrast with traditional financial data platforms, which often limit transparency through complexity and paywalls.
With this new feature, users can ask questions about company earnings, risks, or strategies and receive natural language answers based on regulatory filings. The function is available to all Perplexity users. Additionally, Perplexity Enterprise Pro users can integrate this feature with data sources like Factset and Crunchbase, offering deeper comparative research capabilities.
This move positions Perplexity as a potential disruptor in the financial intelligence space, particularly for retail investors seeking cost-effective, information-rich resources.
Not long ago, Perplexity AI also launched the 'Lab' feature, now available to Pro users on the Web, iOS, and Android platforms. This feature transforms prompts into comprehensive projects, including reports, dashboards, spreadsheets, and simple web applications.
This capability is seen as an evolution of the platform's existing 'Deep Research' tool, now renamed 'Research'. The 'Lab' supports more complex and extended workflows. Unlike the earlier mode focused solely on information retrieval, the 'Lab' acts as a virtual project team, leveraging web browsing, code execution, and asset creation tools to generate structured outputs. Users can access generated content and interactive elements via dedicated 'Assets' and 'Applications' tabs.
Key Takeaways:
📊 Perplexity AI introduces SEC document access, enabling easy access to financial information for various types of investors.
🔍 Users can directly query financial documents and receive natural language answers, all supported by citations and references.
💻 The newly launched 'Lab' feature supports more complex project workflows, helping users generate structured outputs and interactive content.