The open-source startup trying to out-Bloomberg, Bloomberg
OpenBB has become the backbone of my financial reporting and research.
Every founder must believe they are a giant-killer.
It’s a necessary delusion for anyone who wants to build something interesting and useful, particularly when competing with incumbents who have come to define a category.
I’ve found that the best entrepreneurs are those who ground their ambitions with enthusiasm and gumption, rather than arrogance or bluster. They move fast and listen closely.
Indeed, optimism is much more handy when the time comes to go toe to toe with more established businesses.
Building Opening Bell Daily to compete with legacy media outlets has confirmed this for me, and it’s what I recognized immediately when I met Didier Lopes.
Didier is the founder of OpenBB, an open-source financial data platform that leverages AI to generate Wall Street-level analyses. It does much of what a $30,000-a-year Bloomberg Terminal can do, but at a fraction of the cost and with more customization and transparency.
Since Didier first showed me a demo in early 2024, I have come to rely on his product for a great deal of the research and reporting behind my morning newsletter.
I love its charts, equity research and economic data. When I don’t understand some set of numbers, I can ask its built-in AI copilot to explain it to me. This saves me hours every week.
It’s intuitive, elegant, and in my view, sufficiently disruptive to make noise in a crowded industry.
The platform augments my work as a financial journalist. It’s now an indispensable part of my reporting process — and I’m someone with minimal technical chops.
Every other day I figure out a new feature on the platform that makes my job easier. It’s the kind of tool that rewards exploration, which points to how powerful it is for analysts and coders with the skillset to go deeper.
While OpenBB in this moment isn’t as large as Bloomberg, I’d argue the former builds faster, responds more quickly to customers, and is more cutting-edge in its AI integrations.
It’s edge isn’t just technical. It’s cultural.
It’s true that legacy platforms like Bloomberg have immense inertia. They are robust and dominant. But those same advantage double as vulnerabilities. There is less incentive to experiment and change happens slowly.
OpenBB, by contrast, adapts in real time.
Of course, products reflect the people who build them. Didier asks for feedback often, personally and on social media. The frequency of platform updates reflects that.
When I shared a bottleneck I had with creating a table for my newsletter, Didier quickly coded a custom dashboard for me to integrate.
Branding, color, logo — the works.
This anecdote speaks to the DNA of the company: responsiveness, openness, velocity, continuous improvement.
Those traits — and Didier’s willingness to challenge what’s considered "too big to disrupt” — are what make OpenBB disruptive. Not because it’s declaring war on Bloomberg, but because it’s quietly building a smart, democratized alternative for a new generation of users.
The best startups don’t need to tear down the walls of incumbents. They simply build a better city next door.
If history is any guide, that’s the kind of place that eventually becomes the capital.
Phil Rosen
Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief of Opening Bell Daily
If you’re in markets, media, or research, I highly recommend checking out what Didier is building.
