A new partnership between Morningstar and Perplexity reflects how established financial data providers and AI-powered research platforms are moving to change how financial advisors access and act on investment intelligence.
On Friday, Morningstar announced that it and its subsidiary PitchBook have integrated with Perplexity, the AI-driven search platform, through model context protocol connections.
The new MCP integration allows eligible users to pull Morningstar and PitchBook data, research, and analysis directly into Perplexity's research environment, including Perplexity Computer, a tool designed for multi-step research tasks. Rather than toggling between databases, advisors can pose natural-language questions and receive citation-backed answers grounded in Morningstar's analyst research across public and private markets, according to the announcement.
The Perplexity partnership comes a few months after Morningstar announced another engagement with ChatGPT, in which it launched two apps for existing subscribers to be able to access proprietary data within OpenAI's platform.
The integration with Perplexity also arrives at a moment when the financial advice industry is grappling with how to meaningfully incorporate AI without losing the analytical rigor that clients expect. The speed of platforms like Perplexity may excite growth-minded advisors, but speed without trusted sourcing creates its own liabilities. Morningstar's integration is designed to address that concern directly.
"Our focus is on delivering independent, analyst-backed intelligence in ways that align with how investors and financial professionals work today," said Adam Wheat, head of Data & Research Solutions and chief technology officer for Direct Platform at Morningstar. "By making Morningstar and PitchBook content available in Perplexity, we're extending the reach of our data and research while maintaining the rigor investors require to act with confidence when it matters most."
Traditionally, investment research has required moving across multiple platforms – pulling fund data from one source, private markets intelligence from another, and general market context from a third. The Perplexity integration aims to collapse some of that friction by allowing users to conduct research in a conversational interface that cites its sources transparently.
PitchBook, private market-focused data provider that Morningstar snapped up last year, adds a layer that is increasingly relevant as client interest in alternative investments grows.
"When financial professionals need a source of truth in private and public markets, they come to us," said Tom Van Buskirk, executive vice president of technology and engineering at PitchBook. "By integrating with platforms like Perplexity, we're bringing Morningstar and PitchBook intelligence to the center of the AI tools investors already rely on."
Last month, Morningstar revealed a definitive agreement to sell ByAllAccounts, the data aggregation unit it snapped up in 2014, to Pello Companies – a firm focused on open finance innovation. ByAllAccounts, which has provided account aggregation technology to advisors and wealth platforms for more than 25 years, will operate as a standalone company following the close of the deal, expected in the first half of 2026.
The transaction reflects Morningstar's stated strategy of concentrating its advisor-facing products around proprietary data, research, software, and investment management – areas where it believes its competitive edge is strongest. Morningstar Wealth and Morningstar Retirement together oversaw approximately $378 billion in assets under management and advisement as of Dec. 31, 2025. Notably, Morningstar will remain a customer of ByAllAccounts following the sale, integrating it as a capability within products including the Direct Advisory Suite and Morningstar Investor.
Pello Companies is appointing Cynthia Rojas Sejas as chief executive of ByAllAccounts. She brings 25 years of senior leadership experience in financial data and analytics, including tenures at Moody's and S&P Global.
"ByAllAccounts built a strong and trusted data aggregation platform under Morningstar's ownership," said Rojas Sejas. "Our vision is to deliver to advisors, wealth managers, and wealth technology platforms the most comprehensive financial account data, and an expanded set of capabilities that extend beyond pure data aggregation."
Daniel Needham, president of Morningstar Wealth and Research & Investments, framed the move as a sort of liberation for ByAllAccounts, saying it can now enjoy "focused expertise and investment to support its next phase of growth" rather than remain a secondary priority within a larger organization.
The Morningstar deal is one component of a larger buildout underway at Perplexity. In March, the company announced an integration with Plaid, the financial data network, enabling Perplexity Computer to connect users' brokerage accounts for real-time portfolio analysis. The Plaid partnership gives Perplexity access to holdings, transactions, and balance data through secure connections, making the research platform capable of answering personalized financial questions grounded in a user's actual portfolio.
Perplexity has also expanded its Finance layer with more than 40 live data tools, drawing on sources including SEC filings, FactSet, S&P Global, and LSEG. The finance module also draws from Polymarket, whose founder Shayne Coplan boldly proclaimed that prediction markets can operate as a "global truth machine" as they offer an alternative read on investor sentiment.
Perplexity says 75% of its users ask finance-related questions through AI monthly – a figure that points to the breadth of demand that financial data providers like Morningstar are now racing to serve.
For financial advisors, the broader takeaway is structural. The tools that have long been essential to investment research – Morningstar's fund data, PitchBook's private markets intelligence, Plaid's account aggregation – are now being embedded directly into AI-native environments.
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