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We don't own data. But empower those who do or those who have it

ยท 4 min read

OpenBB isn't a data distributor. We wrote an official statement about this, and I'm providing extra thoughts on the matter here.

Last October, we announced that OpenBB Workspace had officially left beta.

But a few months before that, we made a mistake.

While preparing for the announcement, we had several internal discussions about the best way to help users understand what we were building:

An open workspace where firms can bring their own data, customize their UI, and use AI agents out of the box - all running on their own premises, with no risk of data leakage.


To achieve this vision, OpenBB primarily serves two types of users:

  • Developers (or "brave" analysts): These users are responsible for bringing data into the workspace. Their "Aha!" moment comes when they realize how quickly they can go from an empty workspace to a fully customized environment, using their own data, organized as they wish, with AI agent workflows layered on top.

  • Analysts/CIOs: These users conduct research and analytics within the workspace. They are the ones ultimately getting the job done in OpenBB. Our goal is for analysts and CIOs to actively want to use OpenBB, and to advocate internally for their dev teams to build apps on the workspace.

For developers, the onboarding and data integration experience was clearly essential.

But for analysts and CIOs, it was difficult to realize value at signup without any data or AI agents available. They would land in an empty product, an unhelpful first impression.

To address this, we did two things:

  • We built the OpenBB Copilot (out-of-the-box AI agent with bring your own key capability).

  • Decided to strike a few commercial deals with data vendors, which allowed us to pre-load the workspace with ready-to-use apps, including datasets on equities, macro, options, and some crypto..

Having OpenBB Copilot was fine as an example of an agent, particularly due to the bring-your-own-key capability. Individuals understood this was just an example, and that they could build their own.

However, what we didn't realize was that adding more data was actually hurting our positioning. Users began reaching out with requests for fixed income datasets, complaints about our coverage, and concerns about how financials were reported, to name a few.

But getting into the data business was never our intention.

That's not what we've spent the last three years building.

In fact, it's clearer than ever to us where the real opportunity lies:

  • To enable data vendors, without becoming one ourselves.
  • To amplify their datasets, not just through visualization or AI integration. But by unlocking alpha at the intersection of datasets from multiple vendors.

We're now approached weekly by data vendors who want distribution and want their datasets featured on OpenBB.

Why? Because their data is closer to value, closer to insights.

So, going forward, OpenBB will include fewer out-of-the-box datasets.

Our official company statement can be found here.

But we're not leaving you empty-handed.

We're continuing to add more apps to the open-source platform.

Apps you can connect to the Workspace using your own credentials, so you can get started quickly and on your own terms.

We also created a new solutions page, to show examples of apps that folks can build.

Most of these are actually open source and you can find the link by clicking on one of the cards and on the GitHub logo.