The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has taken a major step towards modernising financial workflows by partnering with Databricks to deploy AI-driven “agent bricks” directly into the heart of its markets. This collaboration aims to automate repetitive tasks, accelerate data integration and empower traders, analysts and risk managers to make smarter decisions in a fraction of the time previously required.
Bridging LSEG data and Databricks’ AI platform
Under the new agreement, LSEG will stream its flagship datasets—starting with Lipper fund data, asset analytics and cross-asset metrics—into the Databricks platform. By using Databricks’ open-source Delta Sharing protocol, these live feeds can be securely shared alongside a firm’s internal databases. As a result, financial institutions can break free from legacy, batch-based data pipelines and harness real-time insights on the same unified environment.
From manual wrangling to automated workflows
Traditionally, investment teams have spent countless hours procuring, cleansing and harmonising raw data from multiple vendors. In fast-moving markets, a delay of even a few hours can render critical analyses outdated. The introduction of Databricks agents—small, AI-powered modules configured to handle specific tasks—promises to eliminate much of this manual effort. Key benefits include:
- Data ingestion and normalization
Agents can automatically pull in new fund NAVs, pricing updates and market indicators, tagging and timestamping each record with minimal human oversight. - Advanced analytics automation
By chaining agent bricks, teams can build end-to-end pipelines that compute cross-asset correlations, backtest strategies and generate risk reports in hours instead of weeks. - Real-time alerting and surveillance
AI-driven monitoring agents can flag anomalous patterns—such as rapid fund outflows or unusual price swings—enabling compliance and risk teams to intervene promptly.
Accelerating investment analytics and trading operations
With the Databricks partnership, LSEG is targeting three core workflows:
- Investment analytics
Portfolio managers can experiment with new factors and models by simply plugging agent bricks into their sandbox environment, reducing setup time from days to mere minutes. - Risk management
Risk officers gain on-demand access to stress-test results and scenario analyses, all produced automatically by dedicated AI agents running predefined templates. - Trading workflows
Traders can build algorithmic execution strategies that adapt in real time to market microstructure changes, leveraging agent bricks that continuously feed in updated bid-ask spreads and order-book snapshots.
A secure, open-source approach to data sharing
Delta Sharing, the technology powering this collaboration, is an open standard allowing live data exchange across organizational boundaries. By publishing LSEG datasets to the Databricks Marketplace, clients benefit from:
- Immediate access
No more FTP servers or manual file transfers—data is streamed securely into customer workspaces via standardized APIs. - Granular permissions
Admins can control exactly which datasets and tables are shared, ensuring compliance with licensing and regulatory requirements. - Continuous updates
As soon as LSEG publishes a new record, it becomes available in the Databricks environment, guaranteeing analysts work with the freshest information.
Voices from the partnership
“Together, LSEG and Databricks can now empower financial institutions to quickly build AI agents that use LSEG’s data to automate tasks, analyse trends and provide real-time, actionable insights,” said Stephen Orban, SVP of product ecosystem and partnerships at Databricks. “This gives them a simple, secure way to go from raw data to smarter decisions about investments, risk and trading in just days.”
“By adding our industry-leading datasets to Databricks Marketplace, we are empowering financial institutions to unlock new levels of intelligence, efficiency and compliance,” added Emily Prince, Group Head of Analytics and AI at LSEG. “It highlights our drive to integrate with the platforms and workflows clients use most, helping them unlock value.”
What’s next for AI in finance?
As AI agents begin to roll out across LSEG and Databricks platforms, financial organisations will be able to shift focus from firefighting data issues to refining strategies and driving alpha. The collaboration sets a new precedent for how market data providers and cloud-AI platforms can work together, streamlining complex processes and delivering real-time, intelligence-driven services to the finance industry.
