Best alternative data initiative—S&P Global Market Intelligence

Initiative overview—ProntoNLP

ProntoNLP transforms unstructured financial content into structured, machine-readable intelligence. Using proprietary artificial intelligence models trained on more than 500,000 earnings calls and over 15 years of financial text, the platform analyzes earnings calls, filings, network transcripts, news and macroeconomic content to identify sentiment, risks, strategic changes, competitive dynamics and business signals that can be incorporated directly into research, quantitative models and AI workflows.

The premise

As investors have increasingly come to rely on unstructured content, traditional research methods and keyword-based analytics have struggled to scale or capture context. At the same time, general-purpose AI solutions have traditionally lacked financial specialization and consistency. ProntoNLP, acquired by S&P Global in January 2025, combines S&P Global’s textual content assets with finance-specific AI models, creating structured, transparent intelligence from earnings calls, filings, expert network conversations and other alternative data sources.

Measurables

ProntoNLP has become a key component of S&P Global’s AI and alternative data offering, helping investment firms transform earnings calls, filings and network conversations into structured intelligence. Customers use it across fundamental research, quantitative strategies and AI-driven workflows to accelerate analysis, identify emerging risks, monitor competitive dynamics and uncover investment signals at scale.

Future objectives

S&P Global plans to enhance ProntoNLP by:

• Expanding its coverage across additional alternative data sources, including news and expert network content.
• Establishing new research partnerships to further validate and develop investment signals derived from textual data.
• Extending access through the ProntoNLP Model Context Protocol (MCP) plug-in, enabling AI assistants such as Claude to access trusted financial intelligence.
• Enhancing adaptive retrieval capabilities and expanding ProntoNLP’s role as a key text agent within the S&P Global AI Data Portal.

Why S&P Global Market Intelligence won

S&P Global Market Intelligence wins its first of two categories in this year’s IMD & IRD Awards on the back of its ProntoNLP initiative, designed to address a persistent challenge facing investors as the volume of unstructured financial content continues to grow: extracting useful intelligence from it at scale. Acquired by S&P Global in January 2025, ProntoNLP combines the firm’s textual content with finance-specific AI models trained on more than 500,000 earnings calls and over 15 years of financial text. Effectively, the platform turns earnings calls, filings, network transcripts, news and macroeconomic content into structured, machine-readable intelligence, allowing users to identify sentiment, risks and other business signals they would not ordinarily be able to. Rather than relying on conventional keyword-based analysis or general-purpose AI, ProntoNLP is designed specifically for financial use-cases, with users incorporating outputs into fundamental research and quantitative strategies.

ProntoNLP’s value lies not simply in processing large quantities of text but, crucially, in making that information actionable—a recurring theme across the industry whenever analytics tools are being vetted. By accelerating analysis and helping firms surface signals and emerging risks that might otherwise be difficult to identify, ProntoNLP has become an important component of S&P Global’s broader AI and alternative data offering. Planned expansion into additional content sources, research partnerships and AI access through the ProntoNLP MCP plugin will no doubt extend its reach, while reinforcing its role as a trusted text intelligence layer for investment workflows.