Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry Jack Kokko – Building the Google of Finance at AlphaSense (EP.461)
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Sep 25, 2025 
Jack Kokko, co-founder and CEO of AlphaSense—a market intelligence platform hailed as the 'Google for finance'—shares insights from his journey from an investment banking analyst to leading a cutting-edge AI-driven company. He discusses his early frustrations that inspired AlphaSense, the evolution of its technology, and the intersection of AI and investment decision-making. Jack reveals how LLMs enhance research productivity, the challenges of building AI interviewers, and his vision for a constantly evolving intelligence machine that transforms the finance landscape.
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Born From Analyst Frustration
- Jack Kokko built AlphaSense to solve analysts' info overload and speed constraints from his banking days.
- He saw consumer search like Google but nothing tailored to finance professionals' vocabulary and needs.
Semantic Search As A Differentiator
- AlphaSense began as a semantic search engine linking finance vocabulary to core concepts across documents.
- That allowed reliable discovery of relevant data globally despite varied terminology.
Require Document Citations
- Trust answers only when the system provides clear, citable sources and let users read the originals.
- Use the machine's narrative to speed research but always inspect underlying documents for context.