Digital Digest: The Latest Tech News

The latest technology news in the wealth management sector from around the world.

LinqAlpha, a New York-headquartered AI-native company building the Alpha Intelligence Layer for global public markets, has launched LinqAlpha AI Lab, a research organisation dedicated to advancing AI for institutional investing.

Through open research, practical benchmarks and industry collaboration, the Lab will study how AI systems understand financial information, when their judgment can be trusted, and how AI can improve institutional investment decision-making, the firm said in a statement.

The business is targeting the Asia-Pacific market, among others. The launch follows LinqAlpha’s recent $22 million Series A funding, which is supporting the company’s continued expansion across APAC, including newly established subsidiaries in Singapore and Hong Kong, alongside investments in regional research, engineering and client-facing teams. The AI Lab will play a central role in this next phase of growth by translating research into practical tools and benchmarks for financial institutions across the Asia region.

The launch comes as financial institutions confront a widening gap between AI adoption and AI accountability. As banks, hedge funds, and asset managers increasingly embed large language models (LLMs) into research and investment workflows, the industry is shifting its focus beyond model capabilities to a more fundamental question: when can AI be trusted to support high-stakes financial decisions?

This question carries a particular edge in the Asia-Pacific market, where financial institutions operate across diverse languages, markets and regulatory environments, the firm said. Firms must ensure that AI systems can accurately interpret multilingual financial information while meeting the transparency, explainability and governance standards required in highly-regulated financial markets, it siad.

LinqAlpha AI Lab aims to help address these challenges through open research and practical benchmarks that enable institutions to evaluate AI systems before deploying them into "mission-critical" investment workflows, it said.

“Everyone is deploying AI in the front office, but trust has become the industry’s biggest unanswered question,” Jacob Chanyeol Choi, co-founder and co-CEO of LinqAlpha, said. “For AI to create long-term value in financial markets, institutions need confidence not only in AI’s outputs, but, more importantly, in how its reasoning can be measured, validated and governed. The Lab exists to close that gap through open, peer-reviewed research.”

LinqAlpha said it plans to deepen research collaborations with universities, financial institutions and industry partners while expanding AI research talent across APAC.

The business serves more than 70 financial institutions across the US, Europe, and Asia, including sell-side sales, trading, and research teams at leading investment banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Collectively, LinqAlpha’s buy-side clients manage more than $5 trillion in assets.