Kensho | AI & Machine Learning Solutions by S&P Global

In today’s data-driven world, businesses are drowning in information but starving for insight. From earnings call transcripts to complex financial reports and unstructured news articles, the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. Harnessing this data effectively is the key to unlocking competitive advantage. This is where Kensho, the innovative AI and machine learning arm of S&P Global, steps in. Kensho provides a suite of powerful AI Solutions designed to structure, analyze, and enrich complex data, turning information overload into actionable intelligence for the world’s leading institutions.

This guide will provide a comprehensive overview of Kensho’s offerings, from its core product features and pricing models to how it stacks up against competitors. Whether you are a financial analyst, a data scientist, or a technology leader in the Fintech space, understanding Kensho’s capabilities is crucial for navigating the future of Enterprise AI. We will explore how Kensho’s advanced Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing tools can transform your workflows, enhance decision-making, and drive unprecedented efficiency.

Unpacking Kensho’s Core AI Features

Kensho’s strength lies in its portfolio of specialized tools, each engineered to solve a specific, high-value data challenge. These are not generic, one-size-fits-all models; they are sophisticated Data Solutions trained on S&P Global’s vast and proprietary datasets, giving them unparalleled accuracy and domain expertise, particularly in finance.

Kensho Scribe: AI-Powered Transcription

Manually transcribing earnings calls, interviews, and meetings is slow, costly, and prone to error. Kensho Scribe is a state-of-the-art speech-to-text solution that delivers highly accurate, speaker-diarized transcripts in minutes.

• Key Feature: Optimized for the complex terminology and accents common in financial and business contexts.
• Use Case: Instantly generate searchable, accurate transcripts of investor calls to identify key metrics and sentiment without manual review.

Kensho Link: Structuring Unstructured Data

What if you could instantly identify every company mentioned in a document and link it to its official market identifier? Kensho Link does exactly that. It cleans, normalizes, and links unstructured text data (like company names) to a definitive database, such as S&P Global’s Capital IQ database.

• Key Feature: Disambiguates entities with high precision (e.g., distinguishing “Apple” the tech company from “apple” the fruit).
• Use Case: Automate the process of linking companies mentioned in news articles to your internal CRM or portfolio management system, ensuring data consistency.

Kensho NERD: Named Entity Recognition and Disambiguation

NERD goes a step further than Link by identifying and categorizing a wide range of named entities—people, places, organizations, and more—within any text. It uses advanced Natural Language Processing to understand context and provide structured output.

• Key Feature: Provides confidence scores for each identified entity, allowing for more nuanced data pipelines.
• Use Case: Extract all key executives, companies, and locations from thousands of research reports to build a relationship map or identify emerging trends.

Kensho Classify: AI-Driven Document Classification

Organizing and routing documents is a significant operational bottleneck. Kensho Classify leverages cutting-edge Machine Learning models to automatically categorize documents based on their content. It can be trained on your custom taxonomies to sort everything from news articles to regulatory filings with superhuman speed and accuracy.

• Key Feature: Highly customizable to learn your specific business logic and classification needs.
• Use Case: Automatically tag incoming news feeds by industry sector, relevance, or sentiment to route critical information to the right analyst team instantly.

Understanding Kensho’s Pricing Model

As a provider of premium Enterprise AI solutions, Kensho does not offer standardized, off-the-shelf pricing tiers. This is standard for services of this caliber, as each client’s needs regarding data volume, implementation complexity, level of customization, and support are unique.

The pricing model is typically based on a “Contact for Quote” approach. Here’s what that generally entails:

1. Discovery & Scoping: The process begins with a consultation where Kensho’s team works with you to understand your specific use case, data sources, and desired outcomes.
2. Custom Proposal: Based on the scope, Kensho will provide a custom proposal. Pricing factors often include:
   • API Usage: The volume of data processed (e.g., hours of audio for Scribe, number of documents for NERD).
   • Model Customization: The extent of training required for models like Kensho Classify to learn your unique taxonomy.
   • Integration Support: The level of engineering support needed to integrate Kensho’s AI Solutions into your existing workflows and platforms.
   • Access to S&P Global Data: The value of leveraging Kensho’s pre-linked access to S&P Global’s proprietary datasets.

While a specific price tag isn’t public, the value proposition is clear: the ROI is measured in massive efficiency gains, reduced operational risk, and the ability to generate alpha through superior data insights. The cost is an investment in a foundational data infrastructure powered by one of the most respected names in finance, S&P Global.

Kensho vs. The Competition: A Comparative Look

Kensho operates in a competitive landscape, but its unique position as part of S&P Global gives it a distinct edge. Here’s how it compares to other common solutions:

In essence, while cloud AI platforms provide the building blocks, Kensho provides a near-complete, domain-optimized solution.

Getting Started: A Glimpse into the Kensho API

Integrating Kensho’s tools is designed to be straightforward for development teams. The solutions are typically accessed via a secure REST API. Here is a hypothetical Python code snippet illustrating how you might use an API endpoint for Kensho NERD to extract entities from a news snippet.

import requests
import json

# Your secure API key and endpoint provided by Kensho
API_KEY = "YOUR_KENSHO_API_KEY"
NERD_ENDPOINT = "https://api.kensho.com/v1/nerd"

# The text you want to analyze
article_text = """
S&P Global announced its acquisition of IHS Markit, a move that is expected
to reshape the financial information landscape. The deal, valued at $44 billion,
was led by CEO Douglas Peterson.
"""

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

payload = {
    "text": article_text
}

# Make the API request
response = requests.post(NERD_ENDPOINT, headers=headers, data=json.dumps(payload))

# Process the results
if response.status_code == 200:
    entities = response.json().get("entities", [])
    print("Extracted Entities:")
    for entity in entities:
        print(f"- Text: {entity['text']}, Type: {entity['type']}, Confidence: {entity['confidence']:.2f}")
else:
    print(f"Error: {response.status_code} - {response.text}")

# Expected Output:
# Extracted Entities:
# - Text: S&P Global, Type: Organization, Confidence: 0.99
# - Text: IHS Markit, Type: Organization, Confidence: 0.98
# - Text: $44 billion, Type: Money, Confidence: 0.95
# - Text: Douglas Peterson, Type: Person, Confidence: 0.97

This example demonstrates the simplicity of sending unstructured text and receiving structured, actionable JSON output. This developer-friendly approach allows for rapid integration into any Data Solutions pipeline.

Conclusion: Your Partner in Enterprise AI Transformation

Kensho, backed by the data authority of S&P Global, offers more than just a set of tools; it provides a strategic advantage. By deploying its specialized AI Solutions, organizations can automate mundane tasks, unlock profound insights from their unstructured data, and empower their teams to focus on high-value analysis rather than low-level data wrangling. The combination of domain-specific Machine Learning models, seamless integration with world-class financial data, and a focus on solving real-world Fintech challenges makes Kensho a formidable partner. If your organization is ready to move beyond manual processes and truly leverage the power of your data, exploring Kensho’s suite of Enterprise AI products is a critical next step.