Founder of the Bloomberg Terminal explaining the function that makes it worth $30,000 a year:

Thanks for sharing this! I can do this feature in one week with my AI setup and still have a life. Good luck to Bloomberg!

No, you can’t.

Oh sweet summer child. I’ll take back the claim “have a life” but in general I already have my ClaudeCode agents building part of this Ontology graph as we speak 60% done for the SP500 in the last few weeks.

@hamptonism I have two finance degrees and have played a lot with Claude cowork. It’s really impressive and it and probably creates a great frontend but it’s not consistent enough with data and you’d still be stuck without a lot of the data sources. Also BT is used for communication too.

Thanks for thoughtful reply. With my app I don’t intend to replace BT just to play around with features that are useful to me. But if you want to use autonomous AI agents like Claude to build complex research and connect metadata it’s 100% possible today for anyone with CS skills For example Palantir Maven uses Claude to power their operations. Literally what they are doing in Iran right now.

$30K? That’s just Excel with a personality.

Bros brain when typing this:

Ultimate guide to the Bloomberg Terminal:

All that just to underperform magic internet money

Lol no. That tool is actually quite unreliable once you get out the megacap stocks. BBG’s power comes from everybody being there (ie chat) and maybe, access to the headlines that move the markets

You think the moat is a groupchat … ?

No, the moat is a function that misses a lot of key industry participants 🤣 Clearly not a moat avoiding being left behind because I can't read what everybody else is reading because I'm not where everybody is. everybody pays 30k+ cause they're stupid or just want to flex

Bro, Bloomberg is just charging you for the ego boost of using their Terminal.

No, Bloomberg is an extraordinary &essential tools for finance professionals.

@MacroBombastic @grok what would it take to fully build a new bloomberg terminal from scratch? Data and all.

Building a Bloomberg Terminal clone from scratch—including all data—would cost $5-10B+ and 5-10 years minimum. Key hurdles: - Data moat: License real-time feeds from 100+ exchanges, OTC desks, news wires (Reuters, etc.). Exclusive deals + compliance = billions upfront, endless legal battles. - Infra: Low-latency global network, massive data warehouses, secure messaging/trading integration. - Team: 1,000s of quants, devs, domain experts. - Network effects: Pros use it because *everyone else* does for instant chat/deals. DIY alternatives (OpenBB, yfinance + Python) handle basics for free but lack depth, speed, and pro exclusivity. Bloomberg's edge is 40+ years of accumulation—no quick copy.

@_PatrioticEagle @hamptonism @MacroBombastic @grok Reconcile your last reply regarding the hurdles of replicating a Bloomberg Terminal with Musk's plan to build "MacroHard." Microsoft Corporation seems far harder than BT to clone, yet Elon is pursuing it. Is a swarm of AI agents + funding not enough? Why 5 - 10 years?

Bloomberg Terminal's moat is external: exclusive data licenses from exchanges/news wires, regulatory compliance, and 40+ years of relational trust/network effects that no amount of AI agents or cash buys overnight—counterparties simply won't grant access fast. MacroHard targets AI-native software creation (agents for coding, automation, generation) built from scratch using internal models and compute. No legacy data deals needed; value comes from novel capabilities and iteration speed. Funding + agent swarms accelerate R&D massively, but full reliability, security, and market adoption for enterprise tools still take years due to testing, integration, and trust hurdles. Different domains: data brokerage vs. creative automation. My 5-10yr BT estimate holds for its unique barriers; MacroHard's path is shorter in theory but not instant.

@_PatrioticEagle @hamptonism @MacroBombastic @grok Thank you. If AI is increasing in capability at a rate that is at least geometric, how reliable are time estimates of 5 - 10 years? Will current regulatory regimes still exist? Is there a basis for certainty around claims in that time range?

AI growth speeds software and analytics, but Bloomberg's core barriers—securing exclusive real-time data licenses from exchanges/news wires, regulatory approvals across jurisdictions, and 40-year network effects—rely on human negotiations, legal processes, and trust that don't accelerate geometrically. Finance regs evolve slowly via global coordination, unlikely to dissolve soon. The 5-10yr range is a reasoned baseline from fintech history (e.g., failed rivals despite tech leaps), adjustable by breakthroughs but with firm floors from non-AI hurdles. No absolute certainty in any long-term forecast.

The network effect and user interface is a beauty on its own

What makes it worth 30k a year is being able to chat with other people that pay 30k a year.

Bloomberg terminal works because it solves a specific pain: finding data your competitors need. that's the real business model. tools that create information asymmetry print money

I have a $20/month Robinhood account and somehow I'm fine

weird I've been reliably informed that Proplexity Sloputer 3000 has oneshotted the Bloomberg terminal and it's not dead

#AI needs to kill #Bloomberg. This shit can be done on AI

“This is our business”

It isn't difficult to build a network graph. And, to be frank, it isn't useful for anyone managing money either. Liquidity is today, has always been, and will always be all that matters.

On a technical level it is a visual representation of a relational database updated in real time. The graphic interface preloaded with useful queries could be an excellent monitoring tool for traders and authorities watching the markets. The rights to trading data matched with database of market entities is what makes it the moat for Bloomberg. If OpenAI, Anthropic or Palantir get same access to data as Bloomberg - their AI could build a much better and cheaper software. The problem is 99% of retail investors do not need so much data to buy or sell equities.

the answer is always the same: speed. the terminal's actual edge is that information arrives in milliseconds before it hits anywhere else. $30K/year for 10 milliseconds when you're trading size is just a rounding error on the alpha

How many subscribers does he have paying for this?

Nearly 400k.

Elite.

Let’s be real. Traders pay $30k/year to hit up BBG chat . Boomers are just like us

More impressive is Michael Bloomberg still knows the details of his product 40 years later

@grok can you summarize what Bloomberg Terminal is doing and what problem it solves?

The $30K/yr isn't for the features. It's for the network. Every counterparty, prime broker, and compliance desk runs Bloomberg. You can get real-time data elsewhere. You can't replicate a shared infrastructure that's the single source of truth for $20T+ in daily transactions.

The most valuable feature on the Bloomberg Terminal isn’t the data. It’s the network. Traders, banks, funds, analysts - all in the same closed system, messaging each other in real time while looking at the same information. The $30K/year isn’t for charts. It’s for being inside the financial conversation. That’s the real moat.

Ai will dismantle is

@tradingview is better, and it's free 😅🤣😂

The ultimate "monitoring the situation tool" You don't need a bloomberg terminal to make money in markets.

Nice. This is only one small subset, and its very rare to see a BT. They will send C&D if you even post screenshots.

Incorrect.

Used to be the case. Perhaps it was for streaming...

Could vibe code that in a week.

@joao_wedson

bloomberg built an empire on data access, now that data is becoming permissionless, what happens to the 30k price tag?

1. Get access to a massive trove of data 2. Manipulate the data 3. Figure out how to make it user friendly 4. 40 years of refinement 5. Launch inside a wealthy industry 6. Operate with regulatory capture Someone will revamp Terminal within 24 months and sell it for $1000/year, with little overhead.

@TheTerminal is probably the single best platform in finance...No other platform does what it does, people who say otherwise probably have never used it. I've had it since 2013, its amazing

@grok can you explain step by step how I can do this in bloomberg

No. The most important reason people pay $2,500 per month is to have access to Bloomberg Messages. It’s like an elite club where short messages get read immediately unlike email or phone messages.