Excel’s Quiet Revolution — How a Spreadsheet Is Redefining Modern Finance

The Familiar Tool Nobody Wants to Quit

Every few years, a new wave of fintech software arrives promising to “kill Excel.” Yet here we are, forty years on, and the spreadsheet remains untouchable. It isn’t just habit — it’s identity. Finance professionals trust Excel because it’s where they learned the craft, where the models live, where mistakes feel visible and fixable.

So instead of trying to unseat the champion, the smartest AI companies are choosing a different path: make Excel itself smarter. Why fight gravity when you can ride it?

This approach flips the old story of “unbundling Excel” on its head. For decades, tools like Salesforce, Tableau, and Asana chipped away at its functions. Now, the trend is rebundling — feeding intelligence back into the grid finance teams never stopped relying on.

Why Now? Timing Is Everything

Finance teams are drowning in tools. An analyst might have six or seven platforms open just to get through the day, each with its own login and quirks. The fatigue is real. In that context, another standalone app feels like punishment. But an AI assistant living quietly inside Excel? That feels like relief. No new interface, no lost time, no extra training. Just your same old spreadsheet — only faster, sharper, and surprisingly more powerful. And the market is validating it. OpenAI poured $14 million into Endex.ai, a startup building “digital analysts” directly into Excel. Shortcut, an MIT-born platform that looks like Excel but thinks like AI, went viral after showing it could outperform junior bankers at their own models. Timing matters, and suddenly spreadsheets are the stage where AI makes the most sense.

The Economics of Embedding

Consider the advantages. Excel already has 750 million users. No fintech startup could dream of that distribution network. Adoption happens virally — one analyst shares an AI-enhanced model, and soon an entire desk is using it. The learning curve? Essentially zero. Professionals don’t have to abandon workflows they’ve honed for years. ROI shows up immediately, not months later after a grueling software rollout. It changes the competitive game entirely. Instead of asking, “Can we convince people to switch?” companies now ask, “Can we deliver real value inside the tool they’ll never leave?”

The Startups Writing the Playbook

Endex: The Backed Pioneer
With OpenAI’s seal of approval, Endex is building AI that reads filings, updates models, and keeps audit trails clean — all inside Excel. A growth equity VP called it “the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” That kind of praise doesn’t come lightly in finance.

Shortcut: The Viral Sensation
Shortcut doesn’t just add to Excel; it rebuilds it. Using natural language, it can spit out leveraged buyout or DCF models that rival Goldman or McKinsey analysts. And it did what every startup dreams of — it went viral.

ProSights: Automating the Grind
While less flashy, ProSights solves a pain every analyst knows too well: wrangling data from PDFs. Drop in a file, and ProSights delivers clean tables straight into Excel. Hours of late-night manual entry? Gone.

Why Generic AI Falls Flat

Sure, Microsoft has its Copilot, and there are plenty of general-purpose AI assistants. But finance is unforgiving. A single wrong number can sink a deal. Generic copilots don’t understand EBITDA quirks or regulatory demands. Purpose-built tools do. They know the difference between “good enough” and “deal breaker.” They provide citations, guardrails, and integration with trusted data sources. That trust is why they succeed where others fail.

Think about this: a DCF model that once ate up 40 hours of labor now takes four. Scenario planning that stretched into days can be run in minutes. Suddenly analysts can spend time on strategy instead of keyboard gymnastics. And this is only the beginning. Today’s tools act like assistants — suggesting formulas, cleaning data. Tomorrow’s will behave like agents: updating models as new filings drop, flagging risks before you even think to check. It’s less about replacement and more about evolution. Just as calculators didn’t eliminate finance jobs but changed the skills that mattered, AI inside Excel will shift the profession toward judgment, interpretation, and direction.

A Lesson From Bloomberg

This isn’t the first time Excel was quietly supercharged. In the 1990s, Bloomberg built dominance by plugging its data directly into spreadsheets instead of forcing users into its terminal. Analysts stayed in their comfort zone, adoption spread organically, and firms became hooked. The same dynamics are playing out now. Integration depth beats flashy feature breadth every time.

Of course, it isn’t easy. Building reliable AI inside Excel means navigating API limits, version quirks, and the messy reality of real-time data. More importantly, it requires earning the trust of professionals who know the cost of a single mistake. But when the payoff is shaving days off a deal process or unlocking insights impossible by hand, the effort becomes not just worthwhile, but inevitable.

The future isn’t periodic model updates. It’s living spreadsheets that evolve in real time, fed by streams of market data and powered by AI agents running beneath the grid. Firms that embrace this early will move faster, think broader, and outmaneuver rivals still slogging through manual work. For startups, the choice is stark: enhance Excel or risk irrelevance.

The Bottom Line

Excel isn’t going anywhere. It’s the language of finance, and AI is only making it more fluent. From Endex’s digital analysts to Shortcut’s viral demos and ProSights’ automation magic, the quiet revolution is already underway. The lesson? The future of fintech AI isn’t about building a shiny new platform to replace Excel. It’s about making the spreadsheet itself intelligent. And if history is any guide, that future will arrive not with fanfare, but with the quiet familiarity of a tool everyone already uses.

Sources for images: Foundation Inc.
Sources for research: OpenAI, MIT, SEC filings, Bloomberg archives
Additional references: Endex.ai, Shortcut, ProSights