Inspiration As students, we kept seeing people around us, especially our friends, jumping into investing without fully understanding the risks. Most were following social media trends, hoping for quick profits, and sadly, some ended up losing a lot. It felt more like gambling than real financial planning. Around the same time, we were studying sustainability and started reading academic research papers. That’s when we found something interesting some studies showed that companies focused on sustainability and social responsibility performed better in the long run. That sparked an idea: what if we could build a tool that helps people invest not just for profit, but for real, long-term impact?
What it does ESCIA AI is a smart, student-built platform that helps people especially beginners make safer, more responsible investment decisions. It brings together financial data, sustainability scores (ESG), and insights from academic research to give each company a unique SPR Score (Sustainability–Profit–Research). This score helps users see which companies are not just doing well financially, but are also ethical, future-ready, and backed by solid research. The platform also includes an AI assistant that breaks down complex investment data into simple, personalized advice.
How we built it We started by digging into a ton of research papers to understand what actually makes an investment sustainable and reliable. We found patterns like how strong ESG practices and long-term thinking often lead to better performance. Based on those learnings, we built a 4-step AI pipeline that combines three main data sources: financial performance, ESG metrics, and academic research. We used tools like Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro for understanding documents and company reports, NVIDIA’s cuOpt for optimizing decisions, and MongoDB for storing and updating data. We also added a Mistral-powered AI assistant that makes everything user-friendly and clear.
Challenges we ran into One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to bring together so many types of data financial numbers, sustainability reports, and research findings and make sense of it all. At times, it felt overwhelming. Some research papers even contradicted each other, so we had to really think critically and test what worked. Another big challenge was making the platform simple and useful for people who may not have a background in investing. We had to strike a balance between powerful analysis and easy-to-understand results, which meant a lot of trial and error with design and user feedback.
Accomplishments that we're proud of We’re proud that we built a real, working platform from scratch as students not just a concept. Our biggest achievement is the SPR Score, which combines data from different worlds (finance, ESG, and research) into one meaningful number. We’re also proud of how user-friendly the AI assistant is. It’s not just technical it’s personal, and that matters when people are trusting it with investment decisions. Seeing our friends use ESCIA AI and say, “This actually makes sense now” was one of our proudest moments.
What we learned We learned so much more than just coding or using AI tools. We learned how to take a real-world problem, research it deeply, and build something meaningful from it. We also learned how important it is to think from the user’s point of view to make things clear, relatable, and useful. Most of all, we learned how to be patient and stick to our vision, even when it got hard or confusing.
What’s next for ESCIA AI: Enhanced Company Analyzer We’re excited to keep building ESCIA AI. Next, we plan to expand it to cover more companies from global markets, especially startups working on climate tech and social impact. We also want to add a feature where users can track their own portfolios and see how “sustainable” their investments are over time. In the future, we’d love to create a mobile app and add community features where users can share tips, ideas, and learn together. For us, ESCIA AI isn’t just a project it’s the beginning of a smarter, more responsible way to invest.
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