FinancIA – Your Intelligent Investment Assistant

Smarter investing made simple with AI and deep research.

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💡 Inspiration

Many aspiring investors feel overwhelmed by the volatility and complexity of financial markets. Access to reliable insights, personalized advice, and real-time information is often limited to professionals or comes at a high cost. We created FinancIA to democratize intelligent investing by combining AI-driven analysis, deep research, and market updates through a conversational interface.

⚙️ What it does

FinancIA is an AI-powered investment assistant that allows users to:

  • Get real-time financial news and market summaries
  • Ask natural language questions about the performance of stocks or cryptocurrencies
  • Receive deep research-based recommendations on which assets to invest in, based on their risk profile and preferences
  • Save assets to a watchlist and receive smart alerts
  • Explore curated investment ideas through Perplexity’s Sonar Deep Research API

🛠️ How we built it

  • Frontend: Built with React, styled for a clean, accessible UX, deployed on Vercel
  • Backend: Developed using Node.js and Express, hosted on AWS (Lambda & API Gateway)
  • AI Integration:
    • Sonar-pro for real-time, fast insights and contextual Q&A
    • Sonar-deep-research for investment recommendations and long-form reports on market sectors and company trends
  • Secure communication is handled via HTTPS and secrets are stored using AWS Secrets Manager.

🚧 Challenges we ran into

  • Managing prompt length and context retention when calling both sonar-pro and sonar-deep-research APIs in tandem
  • Balancing conversational UX with displaying rich financial data
  • Parsing and ranking large volumes of Sonar output to present it clearly and meaningfully
  • Implementing fallback handling when APIs timeout or return ambiguous results

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully integrated two advanced Perplexity APIs into a seamless user flow
  • Built and deployed a fully working MVP with real-time interaction and personalized investment insights
  • Designed a conversational assistant that’s not only functional but educational for users new to investing
  • Made investment research more approachable and accessible

📚 What we learned

  • The importance of context-aware API management when combining fast-response (sonar-pro) and deep-response (sonar-deep-research) models
  • How to shape prompts to extract concise vs detailed information from the same knowledge base
  • That users value simplicity and relevance over dense financial jargon
  • How to use AI not just for content delivery, but as a tool for user empowerment

🚀 What's next for FinancIA – Your Intelligent Investment Assistant

  • Integrate sentiment analysis from social platforms like X (Twitter) or Reddit
  • Add personal finance tracking tools and portfolio performance visualization
  • Expand language support for Spanish and other languages users
  • Offer voice interaction and WhatsApp integration for wider accessibility
  • Launch a beta program with real users to refine recommendations based on feedback

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