AI agents are only as good as the real-time data they reason on, and that shift is about to change how alternative data is bought, priced, and used on Wall Street. On this episode of Invest with AI, Brett sits down with CarbonArc founder Kirk McKeown, who spent two decades building the primary research and data operations at Glenview and Point72 before going out on his own.
Kirk walks through how credit card panels went from real alpha to expensive table stakes ("paying alpha prices for smart beta"), why he built CarbonArc around consumption pricing and MCPs that plug straight into AI agents, and how markets could trade as agents get plugged into live data.
What we get into:
How Kirk built a channel-check operation at Glenview that ran 20 calls for every 4 a typical analyst made, tracking supply chains monthly instead of quarterly
Why credit card panels went from real alpha to table stakes, and why funds are still “paying alpha prices for smart beta”
What separates raw data from a usable signal, including his Tractor Supply example of a cold Texas winter that lifts comps but not margins
Why Kirk thinks AI models are only as good as the real-time data they reason against, and how CarbonArc is plugging its data into AI agents through MCPs
How markets could trade once agents are wired into live data, and why he expects more volatility along the way
Whether Claude or another large model can be trained to pick stocks, and why Kirk would still keep a human in the loop
Chapters (Timestamps)
0:00 Intro
0:35 From Tudor to Glenview to Point72
2:43 Industrializing the Channel Check
8:33 The Craft of a Great Expert Call
11:08 Be a Counterparty, Not a Service Provider
13:33 How Alt Data Rewrote Consumer Research
16:34 Where Alpha Goes When Data Goes Mainstream
20:40 Turning Raw Data Into a Real Signal
27:21 How Card Data Distorted Price Discovery
30:09 Why He Started CarbonArc
33:26 Working With (and Around) the Data Incumbents
39:43 AI Is Only as Good as Its Inputs
40:41 Will AI Change How Markets Trade?
44:09 Can Claude Be Trained to Pick Stocks?
45:29 How to Use CarbonArc
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