The only constant is change

2025 was a fascinating year given the changes we’re starting to see from AI for market data and broader decision support desktops. This is without any doubt the fastest rate of change I’ve seen, going back to 2003 on the vendor side and the late 90s as a user. It’s fascinating and exciting, and explains the sudden availability of funding for anyone with a data science degree and a few lines of code.

Quick definitions:

Choose your strategy

For every desktop provider, they have an early, critical strategic decision. Do they want to be an alternative primary desktop? Meaning they will offer the full range of capabilities of a Bloomberg, unlocking (at least in their telling) an enormous multi-billion dollar TAM.

LSEG and FDS have both tried this, with varying degrees of success, FDS having done a strong job in the institutional asset management area, where its interface, strong content integration and multi asset portfolio analytics have won it many fans. Both have strong IB and Wealth franchises, though these areas are structurally free of Bloomberg competition due to the lower advisor | banker price point.

The allure of Bloomberg displacement is, frequently, a trap. The road is littered with the debris of failed ‘Bloomberg killers’, and opting for the displacement path means you commit to building out every one of their capabilities for the customer profile you’re targeting. Want to knock out a Bloomberg and people with clipboards and checklists quickly appear. It is far simpler to win, based on market evidence, by choosing to be a secondary or companion solution, at a lower price point.

Their product is great, keep it, but this offers something unique…

Long ago StarMine was sold in this way (“Bloomberg is a fantastic product, but let me run you through the areas we offer unique features…”). The gilet wearer then called in procurement, excited at new, differentiated content and analytics, a cheque book grudgingly emerged. It’s the pitch for anyone offering alternative data today.

The same approach was true of Lipper, StreetEvents, Baseline, Vestek, StockVal, Datastream and many other wonderful franchises before they were, with limited due diligence, folded into Eikon. The strategy, without much conscious decision, evolved. Eikon, instead of being a sum of its parts, became perceived as a binary choice, it was that or Bloomberg.

Of course even today, it’s far more impressive successor, Workspace, could be positioned for the unique differentiators. It’s just rare that they are:

For those tempted by history’s oldest financial rejoinder: “This time it’s different”, you may (or may not) recall a major scandal in 2013 where Bloomberg journalists were “snooping” on their users, pontificators were calling it the beginning of their end. Trust had been broken, they harrumphed. Needless to say, the accuracy of pundits forecasting the Bloomberg Terminal’s demise make fortune tellers look impressive.

The landscape evolves

Despite the historical evidence, there have been several recent developments that re-ignite the debate on desktop supremacy. Does AI create new vulnerabilities for Bloomberg or for desktop incumbents more broadly? Does the advent of a new generation of decision support tools reshape the landscape?

Let’s review what is changing

All of these developments are transformative and a new UX, though perhaps not (at least yet) a fundamental reordering of the food chain. No new apex predator appears to be emerging.

Chat, again?

A related question focuses on Bloomberg chat / IB. Does the LSEG partnership with Microsoft, or does Microsoft’s ubiquitous Teams platform, with any partner, create new weaknesses to exploit? Has the long forecast Achilles heel finally emerged? For a light snack of deja vu, here is what Symphony said about the need for (and promise of) a better communications platform, at their 2014 launch.

My response to these questions is nope, it doesn’t. The question is complex and multi-faceted – each persona has different requirements, varying by asset class, trading and post trade integration, collaboration and messaging needs, compliance and surveillance requirements and, as always, cost sensitivity.

The lower the trading, post-trade and chat barrier, the softer the target, thus successes often accrue off trading floor, in middle and back office functions. Needless to say, that’s a smaller TAM. The same applies on the buyside – the trader needs chat, the PM might need the chat or the trading integration, while the analysts and all of middle office are the first displacements attempted.

Plus ça change…

Bloomberg’s fortress and moat remain in good shape, yet opportunity always remains for “companion” tools in areas that Bloomberg is weaker or absent. For desktop strategists, they confront a barbell: powerful, if not quite omnipotent, primary desktop incumbents with broad analytical capabilities, chat, trade and post trade tools, a huge array of trade tech integration and capabilities that ensure user loyalty: that’s at one end. At the other are new tools, unique analytics or visualization tools, agentic or generative AI capabilities, productivity enhancers.

The unifying theme is something different that drives a key KPI – sales, alpha, risk management, or efficiency. They bring a convincing narrative on why the guy or gal in the gilet should stump up for your new new thing on top of their terminal. Where you don’t want to be is the squeezed middle. Offering something commoditized. If you are not building differentiators, if your roadmap is dictated by procurement, indulging their desperate need for primary desktop competition, your road is long and hard. Reuters, with 3000Xtra and Thomson Reuters, with Eikon, are cautionary tales.

It may not quite be folly, but it’s certainly a higher risk strategy to start with the premise that you need to displace an entrenched, high quality incumbent. As a product owner, my question should be how do I achieve double digit revenue growth, not dramatically reduce my own options (thereby fixing my roadmap) at the outset by requiring displacement.

A final point on the challenges of the ‘primary desktop’ game, which people outside the industry often forget or overlook. No user wants to switch software, ever. If they’ve got a strong incumbent solution, if they’ve invested the time and the software ‘gets it done’, then inertia rules the day. Name a strong Excel competitor.

Forecasting is hard

I would be foolish not to point out how quickly the desktop landscape is changing. Posts like these can age poorly! Perhaps the incumbents do face existential threats with the advent of new tech and changes in content availability. I just don’t see it yet.

Threats to the disruptors exist, too. Look out 24-36 months and it is very possible that there are too many disruptors for size of market; these firms all have an interesting product yet often limited differentiation and similar target audiences and narratives. With small distribution teams they’re not yet running into each other at scale. Yet game theory says few will give up until VC funding enters its inevitable next cycle. A patient incumbent may just wait for the next funding drought and have their choice of new tools without the high multiple that inhibits cautious CFOs today.

There is no doubt many new and impressive tools are emerging, I’ve seen demos of many of them. To succeed, they must grow quickly, drive brand recognition and acquire and synthesize all the necessary content to become a genuine alternative, that’s a hard task requiring significant investment in content acquisition and partnerships teams, while identifying a mutually attractive business model for the content owner / redistribution partner.

MCP rights and commercials are critical

MCP may bring an alternative solution, allowing systems to pull data from multiple LLM or SLMs, reducing the need to be the aggregator of content and instead just be the aggregator of the answer. Much remains to be seen on the usage rights around MCP, who allows what? Breathless press releases with minimal detail needs to be replaced by some examples of this working in practice, with the vendors offering an attractive, transparent commercial framework that enables innovation, while protecting their own franchise and letting them participate in the upside.

So I see strong value and optionality in the content strengths of the incumbent, in many cases complimented by strong loyalty from their user base (who have no desire to switch software platforms!), and some very competent, high quality product teams that are unlikely to sit passively through this revolutionary epoch. Add this together, It is hard to make the case one of the major players is the next Blockbuster, Kodak or Borders.

However, unknown unknowns will be out there. Even the known unknowns have a broad range of outcomes: how does user workflow evolve over the next 3-5 years? Does AI fundamentally transform these processes, driving a huge uplift in human productivity? Issues as prosaic as the regulatory and macro backdrop will matter. In terms of customer segments: I feel confident saying that the research process will be one of the first to evolve, the investment there is significant and we reviewed the compelling narrative in the AI opportunity blog from December.

Feeling the constraints on article length, hopefully this lays out some of the major questions, uncertainties and options. What is certain, and exciting to consider, is the 3 dimensional chess match on decision support tools that we get to watch over the next few years.

Before you go:

1. What other factors should we consider or be monitoring? feel free to comment below!
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