Balyasny Builds AI Investment Research System Using GPT-5.4

Balyasny Asset Management, a global multi-strategy investment firm with approximately 180 investment teams, has built an AI research system using OpenAI's GPT-5.4—and the results are measurable. The firm says ~95% of its investment teams now actively use the AI platform.

"We evaluate models the way we evaluate investments: on fundamentals. GPT-5.4 proved it could plan, reason, and execute with real rigor," said Su Wang, Senior Research Scientist at Balyasny.

The firm established an Applied AI team in late 2022, a centralized group of 20 researchers, engineers, and domain experts tasked with building AI-native tools that embed into team-level workflows. Before deploying any model, Balyasny built one of the most sophisticated evaluation pipelines in finance, measuring models across 12+ dimensions including forecasting accuracy, numerical reasoning, scenario analysis, and robustness to noisy inputs.

Before settling on GPT-5.4, Balyasny also involved OpenAI directly in user-facing workflows—OpenAI teams observed how investment teams used the AI system to identify where it succeeded, where it struggled, and what high performance looked like in a commercial context.

The results: deep research tasks that once took days are now completed in hours. A Central Bank Speech Analyst cut macroeconomic scenario analysis time from 2 days to approximately 30 minutes. A Merger Arbitrage Superforecaster agent now monitors and updates deal probabilities continuously, replacing manual spreadsheets and alerts.

"AI is enabling our teams to apply first principles thinking faster, across more data, and with more structure," said Charlie Flanagan, Chief AI Officer.