UI layer is the next big frontier

While the industry has heavily invested in data, the user interface remains a critical yet overlooked bridge between raw information and actionable intelligence. This piece explores how OpenBB is revolutionizing how financial professionals interact with data.

For decades, financial research and analytics have been trapped in complex, fragmented workflows.

Firms rely on an ever-expanding set of data providers, yet the tools they use to extract value from that data remain clunky and disconnected. While the market has heavily invested in solving the data layer, the UI layer—the critical bridge between raw data and actionable intelligence—has received little attention.

Why?

Building intuitive financial UIs requires a rare combination of deep market knowledge and modern technical expertise.

Most financial professionals excel in market understanding but aren't software engineers, while most software engineers lack extensive financial domain experience.

This expertise gap has led to reliance on familiar yet limited tools like Excel or third-party desktop apps.

A shift is happening. With AI dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of building software, the barriers between financial expertise and technical implementation are finally breaking down.

OpenBB is here to bootstrap that revolution.

The challenge at the delivery stage

The finance and AI space is cost-intensive.

Innovation requires deep R&D, technical expertise, and the ability to handle highly flexible yet complex workflows. This is why many past attempts to improve financial research software were doomed to fail—as they focused on owning or controlling data instead of optimizing user interaction.

The real opportunity lies at the application layer.

Data is increasingly commoditized, and as financial marketplaces grow, the real value is shifting towards how that data is consumed.

Intelligence—how insights are generated, refined, and acted upon—is where the competitive edge lies.

Why the UI layer has been overlooked

Building a beloved financial desktop application isn’t just about better charts or a sleeker interface. It requires a fundamental rethink of how users interact with their data.

The industry's dependence on fragmented workflows has led firms to tolerate inefficiencies—simply because "it works."

The OpenBB approach: a different path

We aren’t competing with data vendors.

Instead, we’re offering something that no one else has attempted: a flexible, modular workspace where firms can build on top of their own data. Imagine a world where research is seamless, and AI is deeply embedded into workflows rather than just bolted on—where analysts spend more time uncovering insights rather than wrangling data.

Data providers are starting to recognize this shift, but innovation on their platforms is slow.

At the same time, AI is accelerating workflows at a pace that requires a new approach.

AI chatbots alone aren’t enough—without a stronger visualization and interaction layer, they remain a novelty rather than a necessity.

With OpenBB, we are deliberately avoiding the data layer because we believe intelligence—the ability to derive value from data—is the future. Firms want more control over their data and the ability to leverage it without leakage.

That’s why the biggest demand we’ve seen is for on-prem deployments, ensuring security while unlocking intelligence.

Timing matters: why now?

The cost of compute has dropped, making AI-driven applications more powerful and accessible.

The best products emerge at the intersection of technical and domain expertise, and that’s exactly where OpenBB stands—at the intersection of deep engineering talent and financial expertise.

One of our clients recently put it best:

That’s the mission.

Not just another financial tool, but a true workspace for the next generation of research and analytics.

If you have data in Snowflake, Databricks, GCP, Azure, or another platform and want to build a customized workspace tailored to your needs, reach out.

The future of finance is being rewritten.