Finance techie says they cloned Bloomberg’s $30k-a-year Terminal with Perplexity’s Computer — project draws both praise and sizable skepticism

The launch of Perplexity’s Computer got quite a bit of attention from almost everyone with an interest in AI. The new product combines multi-model and multi-agent for both researching and autonomously executing complex tasks. Naturally, almost every techie put it to the test, including X user @hamptonism (Hampton). They claim to have needed but one afternoon to build a clone of Bloomberg’s Terminal, going as far as saying “Perplexity just became the first Al company to truly go head-to-head with the Bloomberg Terminal.”

Those are the pudgiest of bold claims, as the Terminal costs a few pennies at around $30,000 per year. It’s also Bloomberg’s bread-and-butter, representing about 85% of the firm’s approximate $12 billion yearly revenue. Hampton showed a short clip of them operating their terminal clone, and it definitely resembles the Terminal’s basic information and feeds, an impressive feat, at least apparently.

The effort drew immediate praise and no amount of AI hyperbole, borderline stating that Bloomberg is done for. The fact that it’s possible today to build a tool of this caliber with an afternoon of talking to a bot is definitely eyebrow-raising, but as the saying goes, looks can be deceiving, and beauty only goes skin-deep.

Many users immediately pointed out that the data feed for Hampton’s clone comes from Perplexity Finance, which…