Beyond the Model: AI, Excel, and the New Operating System of Finance
Description
In this episode of InDaloop, Thomas Li sits down with Matt Robinson—Founder of AI Street and one of the sharpest voices covering AI in finance—to unpack how artificial intelligence is reshaping the true operating system of Wall Street: Excel.
They go past the hype to dig into what actually matters in real workflows—why modeling is about process, not just output, how AI really works under the hood through tokens and tool calls, and why the biggest breakthroughs are coming from combining models with the right tools and data, not trying to replace humans outright.
You’ll hear a deep dive into:
Why Excel remains the core interface for finance—and how AI is being embedded directly into it
The real difference between large language models, tools, and agents
Why many finance problems still can’t be solved by AI (yet)
How tool-based architectures like MCP change what’s possible in research and modeling
The future of AI-driven modeling, data extraction, and enterprise workflows
Why the winners won’t fight AI—they’ll build the tools that power it
If you sit anywhere at the intersection of AI, investing, data infrastructure, or financial modeling, this conversation will give you a clearer mental model for how the next operating system of finance is being built.





