OpenAI Enters Fintech Market with Acquisition of Investment App Roi

OpenAI’s acquisition of personal finance app Roi, a two-year-old fintech startup that gives customers investment advice across stocks, crypto, real estate, and other areas, marks the company’s first foray into the fintech market.

The acquisition aligns closely with the long-term strategy to expand its consumer offerings. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Roi’s website said it was terminating its operations on October 15.

As a chatbot-based financial advisor providing personalized insights and recommendations based on the user’s financial footprint, Roi is a natural match for OpenAI, known for ChatGPT and which aims to incorporate finance-specific AI expertise into its apps. As Roi’s CEO says; “Personalization isn’t just the future of finance. It’s the future of software.” By connecting OpenAI’s industry-leading large language models (LLMs) with finance data, the company could potentially offer tailored investment advice in future products.

Naturally, the move raises some significant competitive considerations that could ripple throughout the fintech world. With big tech and AI firms increasing pushing into finance, incumbent fintechs may feel pressure to enhance their own offerings. The fact that a small, two-year-old startup can become part of a $500 billion company’s portfolio is an important reminder that innovation in finance can earn the attention of the tech giants quickly. It’s likely that we’ll see more partnerships and acquisitions like this in the coming years.

For fintech companies, as well as the broader financial services industry, the acquisition highlights the growing importance of AI, while serving as a wake-up call for those that might be lagging. AI-driven personalization is a growing priority for companies across the board, but it’s long been held back—and continues to be—by regulatory and privacy concerns. While smaller players often have a difficult time keeping up with those challenges, partnering with established enterprises can help tackle the problem of limited resources and expertise.

Indeed, generative AI is well on its way to becoming a mainstream component of financial services, with almost half of banking executives in the US now having rolled out generative AI tools in their core software products. As a result, incumbent financial services organizations are increasingly partnering with fintechs and major AI vendors and, in doing so, they’re hiring more AI talent and even opening entirely new C-suite positions and departments to address recurring regulatory and ethical concerns. Clearly, this year has seen a dramatic shift in AI for finance from experimentation to core strategy.