Building a Financial Model in Minutes with Openbox AI

Well… sigh of relief time. It is always great fun once you get into presenting on something you care about and enjoy, but the period leading up to it can be stressful!

We were a bit worried as well about sheer numbers, as total registrations started getting dangerously close to the 500 limit set by Zoom. Luckily, we didn’t have to turn anyone away in the end. The technology held up.

You can watch the full event recording below.

With that number of people, we got a lot of questions, and just couldn’t answer them all in the time available.

Many people wanted to know if the AI could build a model for the sector, debt structure or other model that they were interested in. The answer is “yes, if you can give it an example”. We deliberately made it quite easy to ‘teach’ the AI. It’s a three-step process.

First of all, find an example in Excel of what you want to teach the AI. Maybe you want it to know about the revenue streams for battery storage in GB, as one person asked.

Second, make an Openbox component out of that and save it in your Openbox component library. Our free course, lesson 6, shows you exactly how to do that.

Third, tell the AI what that component is. That  just means giving it a one or two line description e.g. “Calculates the revenue for a battery storage component in the GB market which is participating in the balancing mechanism”.

If you are interested in having Openbox build models for your sector, the way you and your team already know and trust, please get in touch.

The AI feature will be introduced in the future and we are eagerly awaiting the launch of our first Beta wave next month to stress test it to the max!

All the existing Openbox features around speed of model build, validation and visualisation are already available.

Let Openbox save you time on your financial model builds by starting your free 14 day trial today.

There were many questions about debt. Can it deal with debt sizing based on DSCR? Can it include a solving macro? Can the AI know what order debt should be paid in, and include equity in that cash waterfall?

Yes, yes, and “we’re working on it” for those three.

There were some questions about the interface and Openbox itself. Do you have to talk to it or can you type? What does the AI do that couldn’t be done through the normal Openbox interface? Isn’t Openbox doing the bulk of the work here?

You can type or talk, it’s up to you. Sometimes it’s handy just to say what you want, and being able to use speech opens up all sorts of possibilities, like Openbox in your iPhone. But sometimes typing is simpler, quieter (open plan office, anyone?) and more precise.

The answer to the second and third questions is that the AI is just an interface. It’s a way of telling Openbox what to do, and can be easier for some tasks. This blog sets it out better than I could: AI isn’t the app, it’s the UI – Stack Overflow Blog.

So what’s next? Well, working on managing debt in a model, adding more sectors and starting to give access to those on the beta waiting list. If you haven’t already signed up, you can here.