AI startups get big-name investors, SEC denies 24X’s exemption request, and more

I often miss living in Brooklyn. When I don’t miss it so much is during solar events. While Wednesday’s solar eclipse wasn’t that special down in the Carolinas, the Perseid meteor shower—combined with a dark new moon—was lovely. And fortunately, we didn’t lose gravity for seven seconds on the 12th. (Please tell me you didn’t believe that idiotic theory. It truly scares me how many people lack common sense.)

Anyway, as for real news and not misinformation…

Announced this week

Kalshi signs with Nasdaq for surveillance

Prediction market Kalshi has signed a multi-year agreement to use Nasdaq Market Surveillance. The company will implement the platform in phases for both its prediction markets and “perpetual-style derivatives,” according to a press release. Nasdaq Market Surveillance is designed to prevent market abuse, including manipulation, insider trading, and other illegal activities.

Nasdaq’s Smarts software has recently come under fire. For more on that story, click here.

Also this week, Kalshi signed a partnership with DoubleZero Edge, a low-latency market-data transport layer.

UBS, FactSet invest in AI intelligence platform

Finster AI has received strategic funding from UBS and FactSet in a Series B financing round. The AI-native platform is designed to support research, analysis, and content workflows across investment banking​​​ and asset management​​​. Finster’s platform uses AI to ​​​integrate​​​ structured financial data, unstructured content, and institutional knowledge into unified workflows​​​ to generate faster, traceable insights and enhance client engagement.​​​

“UBS Investment Bank’s investment in Finster AI reflects our interest in technologies that support the continued evolution of investment banking workflows,” said Greg Peirce, co-head of global banking APAC and AI business sponsor for the bank. “AI and data infrastructure continue to advance across financial services, with potential applications in enhancing efficiency, transparency, and insight generation across advisory and capital markets activities.”

HSBC AM invests in AI automation platform

HSBC Asset Management, through its venture capital arm, has made an undisclosed investment Model ML. The startup’s platform, used by banks and asset managers, aims to automate complex workflows across research, due diligence, financial analysis, and client-ready document creation, while maintaining governance, accuracy, and consistency.

“AI and next-generation software are driving a new wave of innovation across the economy,” said Patrick Sixsmith, head of venture capital at HSBC Asset Management, in a statement. “This investment through our flagship VC strategy reflects our focus on backing companies operating at the forefront of these themes.”

S&P puts tools into Microsoft Copilot

S&P Global is building on its partnership with Microsoft to integrate its data, insights, and analytics into Microsoft 365 Copilot workflows, giving S&P users a straight-through way to access its offerings within the Microsoft tools they already use. The integration is enabled by the S&P Global AI Data Portal’s Deterministic Retrieval solution (also known as the Kensho LLM-ready API), which allows Microsoft 365 Copilot and related experiences to access S&P Global content with accurate, cited, and verifiable results.

Snowflake adds OptionMetrics data to marketplace

Historical options data and analytics provider OptionMetrics has made its data available on Snowflake’s private cloud marketplace. In addition to manually downloading intraday and historical options data and analytics from OptionMetrics, users can now access OptionMetrics data directly from their Snowflake account to save time and reduce capital expenses for data storage.

Allvue Systems rolls out new private credit platform

Using agentic AI workflows, Allvue Systems has launched the Intelligent Loan Operations platform. The vendor says this will bring together the full lifecycle of a loan transaction, from the moment a notice arrives from a loan agent to the moment its data is consolidated into the general ledger.

FIX is developing recommendations for Iosco’s AI toolkit

The FIX Trading Community, the industry association that manages the FIX Protocol, has responded to Iosco’s “Supervisory Toolkit for AI Use in Capital Markets” with several recommendations based on the industry’s established approach to algorithmic trading. The press release did not provide details of those recommendations.

“Many of the potential problems with agentic AI can be mitigated by ensuring appropriate testing, certification, and workflow oversight and record-keeping,” said FIX executive director Jim Kaye in a release. “The good news is that FIX has already done much of the groundwork as part of our work on algorithmic trading, and we are now working on deployment-ready practices that are based on or build upon existing practices, making them easier for firms to implement.”

What you might have missed from us

LSEG–MayStreet lawsuit may have precedent in Delaware court

In the ongoing saga between the London Stock Exchange Group and MayStreet’s founder and former CEO, Patrick Flannery, the latter’s lawyers filed a plaintiff’s note of supplemental authority, arguing that a recent post-trial opinion addressing liability and damages in Delaware’s Court of Chancery is relevant to the court’s consideration of dismissal. The other case, referred to as In re Swervepay Acquisition LLC in the note, involves the sale of e-payment platform SwervePay to software provider Ontario Systems, potentially mirroring MayStreet’s own sale to LSEG. In that case, Swervepay was awarded $120 million in damages.

SEC denies 24X’s requested SIP exemption, for now

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has denied 24X National Exchange’s request to trade overnight until the various equity data plans that fall under the securities information processors (SIPs) are fully functional, which is expected in early December. If the SIP is unable to meet the December date, the SEC has granted 24X temporary conditional exemptive relief starting on January 24, 2027, that would allow the exchange to offer its overnight session. In that event, 24X must supply a free proprietary datafeed with its quotation and trade information, since vendor feeds are not a substitute for SIP data.

A rookie’s guide to tokenized Treasuries

Ever wonder how Treasuries are tokenized? Well, this is Part one of a three-part series on the process, and it looks at how dealers like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citadel Securities worked with the DTCC to use tokenized US Treasuries for a range of transactions, including repo, collateral pledging, and posting margin.

Stopgaps and failsafes: How trading vendors guard against rogue AI agents

This profile of TradeStation’s Titan-X trading platform offers a direct Model Context Protocol (MCP) connection to Anthropic’s Claude, bringing agentic AI into its trading interface. The embedded assistant can propose and initiate trades via the MCP, but every action triggers a mandatory user confirmation, and TradeStation says “everything is permissioned by the user” and “it cannot be automated.”

The complexity of using AI to tackle compliance

Wei-Shen looks at how law firms, such as Linklaters, are now building tools to make compliance workflows easier by using AI.

“We want to look for challenges that still require our Linklaters’ lawyers’ legal judgment to deliver [solutions]. We’re not looking to sell subscription or commoditized services that don’t have a lawyer in the loop,” says Tom Quoroll, a partner in the Linklaters’ structured finance practice, covering a range of asset-backed financing products. “…What we’re really trying not to do is create full-feature software products that we sell to our clients, because that is not our competitive advantage.”

Managing regulatory transformation through a Dual-Flow Operating Model

Darshan Shah, a program manager at Devfi Inc., presents an operating model that enables project teams to implement complex regulatory programs, preserve business continuity, reduce risk, and prepare enterprise platforms for regulatory change.

Rapid-fire repo raises hopes of cheaper, faster trading

Companies are optimistic that tokenization will allow them to convert yield‑bearing Treasuries into cash, enabling intraday and out‑of‑hours repo to aid trade financing, but concerns remain over settlement finality and the need for underlying ownership records to move in step with token transfers.

In other news

McDonald’s Built a 515-Page Dossier on Me. It Says I’ll Never Stop Eating There, Wired

Ever hear of the 2004 documentary “Super Size Me,” where Morgan Spurlock ate only McDonald’s food for a month to see what would happen to his physical and mental health? Well, Wired reporter Reece Rogers asked McDonald’s for a copy of all the data the restaurant chain has collected from him through its loyalty program. It’s a very funny, interesting, horrifying read.