Bloomberg has just announced that chatbots are allowed in external chatrooms. This is huge 💥 Why? Bots in enterprise chat have been around for decades, but adoption in financial markets didn’t take off until Symphony arrived. Their open API allowed developers to build bots to automate workflows. Now, Symphony is as much an automation platform as a chat platform with over 25% of messages sent are bot-to-bot workflows. On the back of this – pre-covid – bots were introduced into both Reuters Messenger and ICE Chat. But not Bloomberg. Why? IB Chat is sacred to Bloomberg. Historically, they were reluctant to embrace bots for fear of 'polluting' chat and spoiling IB’s exclusivity. But times have changed. So, back to basics: What is a chatbot? Perhaps you're thinking ChatGPT type bots or AI agents? Well it’s broader than that, there’s: 🤖 - Query bots 🤖💻 - Task agents and bots 🤖⚡ - Workflow agents and bots 🤖🧠 - Autonomous agents So, what can you do in Bloomberg? For now, bots in IB Chat can fetch/receive data or info and trigger events/actions. You'll still need a human to initiate (most of) these processes. You won’t see AI Agents in IB Chat, yet. Still, the value already is enormous. Trump’s first 100 days brought huge volatility - a boon for traders, sales & brokers. In OTC trading, chat is king and the key tool for price discovery and, often, execution. Imagine this, Trump moves the market, chats lights up: “am I filled!?”, “I need a better price!” In a busy market, desks can only handle so much. The 80/20 kicks in, only top clients get answers. The rest? Silence. OTC desks aren’t scalable in volatile markets. How much more revenue would desks make if all clients got a response? A lot, right? Meanwhile, desks are double (or triple!) keying trades. Not only are the markets stressed by the people too. Fat fingers happen. Fixing errors steals time from clients. A vicious cycle. Now, imagine a ‘self-service’ bot or agent. It can handle the long tail of client queries; returning prices, fills, confirms, whatever it’s permissioned to do. Access controls can limit bot actions, eg only respond to smaller clients, or only give levels if the human is away from the desk. You can do all of this today (many of our clients already do)... but not on Bloomberg. Now the game has changed. You CAN do it on @Bloomberg. Billions of daily messages across millions of chatrooms—until now—couldn’t use chatbots. Now they can. Think of chat as a strategic asset. What are you doing with yours? ---- Look out for my next post about the future of chat across: 👦🏻👩🏻 human-to-human 👩🏻🤖 human-to-bot 🤖🤖 bot-to-bot 🧙🏻‍♂️🧙🏻‍♂️ agent-to-agent In the meantime, check out the 'What is Your Chat Strategy' report. Link in comments.

What I wish someone had told me... 17 guiding principles according to @sama / Sam Altman... 👇