On May 5, Anthropic released 10 financial services agents. The company said they "pair best" with Claude Opus 4.7, a "state-of-the-art" model that leads the industry on financial agent benchmarks. And the hype followed. The media called the agents a threat to Wall Street.

The reality is more complicated.

In today’s episode of Zero Shot, hosts Brady Ng and Praveen Gopal Krishnan are joined by Musheer Ahmed, founder of FinStep Asia and ex-trader, and Sharath Chandra, founder of EmpowerEdge Ventures, to make sense of what actually changed.

The conversation covers why financial services keeps attracting AI investment, why the 10 agents are more useful to junior analysts than to the industry at large, and why trust remains the real bottleneck in finance. They also get into data residency, the regulatory moat protecting incumbent banks, and what happens to a service like the Bloomberg terminal.

Tune in!
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This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Rajiv CN.
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Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.

Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

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Additional Resources

Who watches the AI watching your money?

https://the-ken.com/kaching/who-watches-the-ai-watching-your-money/

Anthropic releases new AI agents for financial services firms

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-releases-new-ai-agents-for-financial-services-firms-e2829b37

Anthropic unveils AI agents for financial services tasks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3RLgeUiUXY

AI for financial services

https://www.anthropic.com/news/finance-agents

What is the market for AI wearables? And what does they do that a phone already doesn’t?

These were the two main questions we asked Dhananjay Yadav, the co-founder and CEO of NeoSapien, a startup that makes an AI-powered pendant that “transcribes in real time, summarises what matters, and reminds you to follow through”. He calls it a “productivity tool” that will change how we interact with devices.

But the AI wearable market is tricky. Remember Humane? The AI pin company? It raised $230 million, shipped fewer than 10,000 devices, and permanently bricked every single one of them on February 28, 2025. And Rabbit, the other AI wearable startup that made a big splash, sold 100,000 units and watched 95% of its users disappear within five months.

And yet here is Dhananjay who is building a pendant in Bengaluru, telling us India can win the global AI wearable race. And the product, he says, will be used by regular people: small business owners, real estate agents, and even journalists.

Tune in!

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This episode was produced by Vidhatri Rao and edited by Cymasonic productions.
____

Zeus, the mascot of Zero Shot, was generated using AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.

Write to us at Zeroshot@the-ken.com. We are all ears!

Recommended Reading:

NeoSapien

What Anthropic’s Mythos can hack in hours, Indian banks take months to fix

Note taking app Plaud

Can a Note-Taking AI Bracelet Really Make You More Productive? I Tested One to Find Out.

It’s the end of 2025, so we don’t have a full episode of Zero Shot for you today.

This podcast launched in September, and we’ve produced 14 episodes for you so far. We’ve covered a wide range of topics, and our conversations—between Praveen, Rohin, and Brady—only work because you’re willing to sit with the complexities we wade into.

We know artificial intelligence will move fast in 2026, so we’ll keep asking the questions that matter in this AI hype cycle. We’re glad you’re coming along with us.

So, thank you, and we’ll be back next week.

As always, if you’d like to get in touch with any or all of our hosts, please drop us a note at zeroshot@the-ken.com. We respond to all messages.

The cover art of Zero Shot is generated by AI. Everything else is made by humans, just like all articles, columns, newsletters, and other podcasts created by The Ken.

You can listen to Intermission's episode on Bajaj Finance on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Join Brady Ng, Praveen Gopal Krishnan, and Rohin Dharmakumar of The Ken as they discuss the big ideas in artificial intelligence. You’ll get the macro view, explore their experiments in practical applications, go deeper than the news coverage you’ve seen, and hear about the implications of the latest developments. Nothing is off the table.