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AlphaSense vs Glean

AlphaSense is an industry-leading market intelligence and qualitative research platform for corporations and financial services.

For over a decade, AlphaSense has been dedicated to the goal of delivering insights to our customers through the use of our proprietary AI technology. With 10+ years of investment in AI solutions, the core AI tech stack has been built and refined for a nuanced understanding of business and financial language—creating a powerful search engine for the most sophisticated companies in the world.

Beyond that, AlphaSense aggregates the largest and most trustworthy collection of business content currently available, bringing together an extensive library of out-of-the-box content and connectors.

Trusted by the world's leading corporations

80%

of the top consultancies

80%

of the top asset management firms

largest pharmaceutical companies

85%

of the S&P 100

FAQs

AlphaSense vs Glean: Key Differences

Glean is an enterprise search solution designed to help organizations efficiently access and utilize their internal knowledge and information. Here’s how it compares to AlphaSense and how you can choose the right platform for your business needs.

AlphaSense

AlphaSense is a secure, end-to-end market intelligence platform powered by generative AI, intended for financial research and business professionals looking to increase research productivity through AI and automation.

Consistently ranked as an industry leader by TrustRadius and G2, AlphaSense was also recognized by Forbes as a top 50 AI company in 2023.

After our latest Series E funding round, AlphaSense is now valued at $2.5 billion, allowing us to continue expanding our enterprise solution and building on our generative AI capabilities.

Here’s how our platform enables you to extract key insights and answers from both high-value internal and external content with the power of artificial intelligence—all on a single platform:

Extensive Out-of-the-Box Content Library

AlphaSense allows you to combine valuable internal content and 10,000+ private, public, premium, and proprietary external data sources into one platform. We have purpose-built our platform to keep teams up to speed on the relevant topics and companies driving their market.

Our external content sources include trade journals, news, and SEC and global filings.. AlphaSense users also have access to two premium and proprietary content offerings.

These are:

Wall Street Insights® – A collection of broker research from Wall Street’s leading firms, covering global sector themes, industries, and companies from 1,000+ sell-side and independent firms, available within the AlphaSense platform. Research professionals can even preview the contents of a broker report, saving them wasted time and money on potentially fruitless research.

Expert Insights – 40,000+ transcripts of one-on-one calls with industry experts, competitors, customers, professionals, and former and current executives, with the ability to conduct your own 1:1 expert calls for less.

In addition to these sources, you can upload and search through your own content. That includes:

Internal research, notes, and presentations
Investment memos and CIMs
Meeting and conference notes
Reports from industry and market intelligence providers
Newsletters, web pages, and RSS feeds
Email content
Excel documents

AI Search & Summarization Technology

Our industry-leading suite of generative AI tools is purpose-built to deliver business-grade insights. Our proprietary AlphaSense Large Language Model (ASLLM)—trained specifically on business and financial data—matches or beats the leading third-party LLMs over 90% of the time.

Our suite of tools currently includes:

Smart Summaries

This feature allows you to glean instant earnings insights (reducing time spent on research during earnings season), quickly capture company outlook, and generate an expert-approved SWOT analysis straight from former competitors, partners, and employees. All Summaries provide you with citations to the exact snippets of text from where the summaries are sourced—combining high accuracy with easy verification.

AlphaSense Assistant (in beta)

Assistant is a generative AI chat experience that transforms how users can extract insights from hundreds of millions of premium content sources. Whenever you search for information, Assistant is there to summarize key company events, emerging topics, and industry-wide viewpoints. You can dig deeper into topics by asking Assistant follow-up questions or choosing a suggested query.

Smart Synonyms™

This unique feature is proprietary to AlphaSense and has the capability to understand both the keyword and search intent behind any of your queries, factoring in search results that include variations in business language. For example, a search for TAM might also bring back results on market size.

Relevancy Algorithm

AlphaSense’s advanced algorithm also eliminates noise (i.e., content with matching keywords but ultimately irrelevant to your specific search objective) and surfaces only the most relevant results. This algorithm saves you precious time and energy, allowing you to get straight to analysis and other high-level tasks.

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment Analysis, a natural language processing (NLP)-based feature, parses through content and identifies nuances in the tone and subjective meaning of text. It then uses color coding to help readers identify the document’s positive, negative, and neutral sentiments.

This technology assigns each search term a numerical sentiment change score to help users track any slight change in market sentiments across time. Users can take advantage of it to make better-informed investment decisions and improve risk management strategies.

This feature can be instrumental in picking up on subtle sentiment shifts in expert interviews that go beyond expert-level commentary. But it can also be applied to company documents—such as earnings transcripts and company presentations—to gain much deeper insight into the perspective of an individual, company, or the market on a key topic.

Integration Capabilities

Through either an AlphaSense-managed solution in our secure cloud or a customer-managed solution in the cloud of your choice, customers can easily integrate content at enterprise scale through our Ingestion API or enterprise-grade connectors—like Microsoft 365/Sharepoint, Box, S3, and more. Enterprise Intelligence supports the upload and management of tens of millions of documents.

Our integration capabilities allow for even greater knowledge sharing with members across your organization and improve overall team productivity. Our proprietary AI technology allows you to search across all internal IP and external company content to find crucial insights, catching what other platforms miss in a secure and automated way.

Lastly, AlphaSense offers content processing and content management. Content processing allows company recognition within user documents, while content management features support custom tags and folder structures to better index and organize internal content.

Monitoring, Analysis, and Collaboration Tools

AlphaSense is designed to help users find insights faster. In order to do that, we offer a number of tools that extend beyond search and summarization to help accelerate research workflows.

Customizable Dashboards create a centralized information hub for monitoring key companies and themes, while tailored real-time alerts provide real-time updates.
Powerful collaboration tools like Notebook+ and commenting features help teams manage and share insights more effectively.
Table Tools allow you to streamline your quantitative analysis by enabling you to export modeled time-series data on company financials.
Image Search allows you to discover insights buried in charts to quickly capture data without reading through pages of documents.
Snippet Explorer allows you to effortlessly look at any topic or theme and all its historical mentions in a single view.
Our Black-lining feature allows you to automatically identify any QoQ changes in SEC filings.
Automated Monitoring allows you to set up real-time alerts that send instant updates on any relevant market movements, news, emerging trends, and competitor activities. We also generate snapshots of companies and topics regularly that keep you ahead of the curve with actionable insights.

AlphaSense Pros

Extensive content database that spans the four key perspectives, including broker research, expert calls, company documents, news & regulatory sites.
Incorporates AI search technology, machine learning, and sentiment analysis
Generative AI features, like Smart Summaries, for earnings and image search
Automated and customizable alerts
All-in-one research platform
User-friendly interface
Internal messaging and collaboration features
Support for APIs and integrations
Supports enterprise-level organizations and teams
Enterprise-grade data production complying with global security standards: SOC2, ISO270001, FIPS 140-2, SAML 2.0
Excellent customer support team, including 24/7 chat with product specialists, a live Help button on the website, and regular live AlphaSense Education webinars

AlphaSense Cons

Visualization tools are limited at this time
Collaboration tools are limited to users with AlphaSense licenses

Glean

Glean is an enterprise search and knowledge discovery tool for modern professionals. Founded in 2020 by a team of former Google engineers and industry veterans, Glean’s goal is to help teams more efficiently access and utilize their internal knowledge and data, ultimately improving productivity and knowledge sharing within the organization.

Like AlphaSense, Glean has been recognized as a leader in the space by G2 and was also named one of the top 50 AI companies by Forbes in 2023. Having recently completed a $100 million Series C funding round, Glean has over 70 customers across various industries including technology, media, education, and healthcare.

As an enterprise search platform, Glean enables organizations to search across various data sources within their internal systems—including documents, emails, databases, collaboration tools, and more. Customers refer to Glean as “Google for the internal workspace,” citing the powerful and customizable search functionality that helps find any topic, project, or technology at work.

In 2023, Glean launched a new suite of generative AI tools—based on their proprietary knowledge model—aiming to improve the accuracy and security of enterprise data and content, as well as enhance productivity and collaboration among teams.

Their main features include:

Glean Assistant – Referred to as “ChatGPT for your enterprise”, this is a digital workplace assistant that can be used for engineering, sales, support, and other queries—pulling answers directly from internal company resources. Assistant also configures with Slack, so that Glean can answer questions raised in Slack channels
AI Answers – NLP-based feature that draws from various sources of content, context, and permissions within an organization’s knowledge base to provide a single, concise answer to any query
Expert Detection – Identifies and connects users with subject matter experts within their company, based on Glean’s analysis of content, activity, and relationships
In-Context Recommendations – Provides relevant additional content and context to any asset users are working on, such as a document or presentation
Deep Learning-Based Vector Search – With a semantic understanding of natural language queries, Glean’s search relevance continues to improve as the model becomes more trained on the company’s unique language and contex

The foundation for these features is Glean’s knowledge model, which is built on three pillars:

Company Knowledge and Context

For each company, Glean creates an enterprise knowledge graph, which understands all the content, people, and activity in an organization, as well as how each piece of information relates to one another. This allows Glean to understand each organization’s unique internal language and the specific collaborative relationships between workers.

Permissions and Data Governance

Glean is committed to complying with all real-time enterprise data permissions and governance rules. This means the platform ensures that each user only has access to information they are allowed to access.

Full Referenceability

Unlike models operating in black-box environments, Glean prioritizes transparency, ensuring that users always know exactly where each piece of information is coming from, as well as who is responsible for it.

Glean Pros

Strong tool for searching and discovering any internal company information
Powerful search functionality with limited filtering capabilities
Generative AI features that make search faster, easier, and more precise
Great collaboration and knowledge sharing features
Integration with Slack allows for greater ease and efficiency with getting answers

Glean Cons

Relatively new in the market; product is still developing and learning
Not built for market research workflows
Search capabilities are limited in terms of phrase matching and keyword proximity
Relevancy score can be inaccurate, leading to sifting through irrelevant search results
No proprietary or premium external content sets available on the platform
Limited customization options, which may not be ideal for teams with unique needs
No ability to set up customizable alerts

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key differences between AlphaSense and Glean?

The main difference between Glean and AlphaSense is that AlphaSense is designed for answering market intelligence questions and accelerating market research workflows, while Glean is an enterprise search platform that can only be used by companies to search and parse through their own internal data.

With that said, a key difference is the scope of content available on each platform. AlphaSense offers an extensive content universe within an all-in-one market intelligence platform, purpose-built for financial and corporate professionals. It provides access to over 10,000 public, private, and premium content sources, including company documents, news, broker reports, and expert call transcripts.

Glean is only an internal knowledge platform, so it does not have access to other companies’ data, news sources, broker research, or expert calls that are integral to a holistic market research or competitive intelligence strategy.

Unlike AlphaSense, Glean lacks sentiment analysis, smart synonyms, and advanced filtering features on its platform, meaning research done on its platform is vulnerable to inaccuracy and human error. And though both platforms have a suite of generative AI tools, Glean’s can only be applied to internal data, whereas AlphaSense’s generative AI can be used to get instant, accurate answers from over 10,000 premium external sources, in addition to internal data.

Moreover, Glean is a much newer product, only having gained traction recently. AlphaSense has been on the market for over a decade and has continuously refined its offering to meet the research needs of top financial institutions, corporations, and consultancies.

AlphaSense clients include 80% of the top consultancies, 80% of the top asset management firms, 85% of the S&P 100, and 20 of the largest pharma companies.

Why do companies choose AlphaSense for market intelligence?

Compared to Glean, AlphaSense offers diverse content options for professionals using the four key perspectives. Giving a more well-rounded, holistic view of any market, the four perspectives allow users to make confident business decisions:

Analyst – Equity research from leading Wall Street banks, that covers global and regional sector themes and industries
Expert – Interviews done with top buy-side analysts and vetted experts with direct industry experience, including past executives, customers, and former and current business partners
Journalist – Content published in major news cables, trade journals, and top government publications
Company – Reports published by private and public companies, including earnings reports, SEC and company filings, transcripts, presentations, and ESG reports

Additionally, AlphaSense’s automation, AI, and genAI capabilities accelerate and enhance your market research process, ensuring you are getting the most juice from your squeeze for every insight you come across.

For a deep, comprehensive, smart market intelligence tool that provides a 360-degree view of the companies, industries, and markets of interest, look no farther than AlphaSense.

How do financial services firms use AlphaSense?

Financial services firms can use AlphaSense for saving time and removing blindspots from their qualitative research process.

Exclusive content sources (like broker research and expert call transcripts) also give institutional investors access to insights they can’t find anywhere else on public and private companies and market trends, keeping them ahead of the pack when it comes to investment opportunities and strategies. Analysts, associates, PMs, and their teams spend less time waiting on and verifying internal data, and more time analyzing investment decisions.

Our clients range from asset management companies and hedge funds to venture capital firms and private equity. Here’s how they use AlphaSense to get ahead:

Asset Management – Execute both top-down and bottom up searches with both keyword and company searches.
Alpha Generation – Uncover unique investment ideas by using AI to surface companies not on your radar.
Due Diligence – Quickly determine the viability of a deal with the ability to map markets, identify segment-specific drivers, and uncover potential red flags.
Sell-Side Research – Accelerate earnings and company analysis by recognizing sentiment shifts and important market events earlier.

Related Reading: How Investment Teams Can Leverage Generative AI

How do corporate strategy, corporate development, and/or competitive intelligence teams use AlphaSense?

AlphaSense is a crucial market intelligence tool for 85% of the S&P 100 and 20 of the largest pharmaceutical companies. One of the biggest differentiators for corporations that AlphaSense provides is Wall Street Insights®—a leading collection of equity research from the world’s leading brokerage firms. This offering allows corporations to conduct more comprehensive competitive analysis, improve client interactions, enhance internal research and strategy, and save their organization time and money with AI and automation.

Here’s how top global corporations use AlphaSense to succeed:

Strategic Planning – Identify growth opportunities with insight from top analysts.
Competitive Intelligence – Maintain a clear understanding of the competitive landscape and monitor specific competitor performance as needed.
Trend Tracking – Stay ahead of emerging trends to capitalize on revenue opportunities.
Market Monitoring – Confidently navigate market shifts by being the first to know of important news and updates.

How do IR teams use AlphaSense?

Earnings season has always been demanding—and advancements in technology have only increased expectations for speed, accuracy, and real-time insight. IR teams use AlphaSense to craft stronger narratives and efficiently prep the C-suite for successful calls.

With tools like sentiment analysis, Snippet Explorer (instantly showing the quarter-over-quarter history of keywords and KPIs), and Topic Modules (summarizing key trends from earnings at the company and industry level), earnings analysis becomes faster and more accurate and streamlined than ever before.

AlphaSense helps IR teams to:

Craft Earnings Narratives – Easily access and scan previous earnings call transcripts and other company documents to maintain consistent narratives quarter over quarter.
Monitor Sentiment Shifts – Recognize significant sentiment changes when they occur and frame them in the most effective way to stakeholders.
Track Market Trends – Monitor trends and understand how they impact your market.
Q&A Prep – Be prepared to answer the questions that are top of mind for analysts.

“The time saved by using AlphaSense is enormous. It easily saves us several hours a week. Requested information can be prepared in a timely, precise and efficient manner. For our daily work, this is essential.”

– Michael Otto, Director of Investor Relations and Sustainability

How do consultants use AlphaSense?

Consultants use AlphaSense to access the insights they need to deliver smart strategic services and win more business. Using the AlphaSense platform, consultants across industries can:

Achieve Stronger Proposal Alignment – Quickly gain an understanding of a company’s strategy and performance with access to broker research, expert call transcripts, earnings transcripts, and more.
Deliver Higher-Quality Market Research – Easily analyze 10 years’ worth of earnings transcripts and get the full picture faster with advanced AI capabilities.
Build Deeper Client Relationships — Act as a confident thought leader with insights easily surfaced for you.
Discover Great M&A Opportunities – Get smart on companies and the market landscape quickly, so you can deliver the very best recommendations to your clients.

How much does Glean cost?

Glean does not publicly disclose its pricing information.

How much does AlphaSense cost?

An AlphaSense user can access smarter features, a better user experience, and an extensive content universe at a more reasonable price. With AlphaSense, you’ll either pay by the enterprise or per seat. Explore our pricing options for more information.

What are some additional alternatives to Glean?

Some additional credible alternatives to Glean are Hebbia, Algolia, Elastic, Guru, Unleash, and Coveo.

For a more comprehensive overview of all these options, check out our Best Enterprise Search Software for 2024 Buyer’s Guide.

Experience the AlphaSense Difference

In today’s highly competitive business landscape, marked by increased economic uncertainty and disruption across industries, a firm’s market intelligence resources hold greater value than ever before. They play a pivotal role in safeguarding competitive advantages and ensuring not just survival, but prosperity.

Ultimately, it’s not a matter of if you should have a market intelligence tool at your disposal, but instead, deciding on one you trust to keep you on the cutting edge of industry news and competitor developments. AlphaSense goes beyond the expectation of a typical market intelligence platform, providing first-in-class insights by integrating and leveraging our proprietary industry-leading AI technologies.

With AlphaSense’s Enterprise Intelligence, you’ll be able to apply our proprietary AI stack over your internal content at scale, asking questions like, “Do we have any research on Google’s AI investment?”, and receiving back instant insights unique to your organization’s perspective.

By ingesting your internal knowledge base, our ASLLM securely understands your organization’s data and thus provides a comprehensive, unique, and ever-evolving view of your business and markets, producing more knowledge than ever before.

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