Identifying opportunities before competitors and winning client trust continue to be the fundamental challenges in dealmaking. Top bankers excel by leveraging deep industry insight to spot strategic transactions early, then positioning themselves as indispensable partners rather than mere intermediaries. Success comes from combining proprietary research capabilities with strategic thinking to present clients with visions they haven’t yet articulated themselves.
Technology is increasingly important to achieving these goals. Bankers can either stick with convention, spending weeks drowning in spreadsheets and outdated reports, or step into the future and roll the dice with new tools like ChatGPT, hoping it doesn’t hallucinate with your next big investment advice.
The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) world has been buzzing about generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), and for good reason. Research that used to take weeks can now happen in minutes. But not all GenAI tools are created equal. While everyone’s been obsessing over ChatGPT, a new player has quietly entered the arena with a weapon designed specifically for the deal-making battlefield. Cyndx’s Scholar.
We asked Scholar to generate a report on, well, itself, using the research query, “How is Cyndx’s Scholar suited for financial services compared to ChatGPT?” The result was a 37-page, methodical dissection comparing the efficacy and value of both platforms in research-heavy, deal-making workflows. Here are the key highlights.
The ChatGPT Problem Nobody Talks About
There is no question, ChatGPT, which many users would describe as “omni-capable”, is impressive. But when you’re putting potentially millions of dollars of fees on the line, “impressive” isn’t good enough. The problem with ChatGPT isn’t that it’s bad at what it does, but that what it does is too generic and isn’t completely what dealmakers need to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
Research published by the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction shows ChatGPT faces five key limitations: accuracy and reliability concerns, limitations in critical thinking and problem-solving, multifaceted impacts on learning and development, technical constraints related to input and output, and ethical, legal, and privacy concerns. For professionals in the M&A space, these minor inconveniences can become deal killers.
Even GPT-4’s performance can fluctuate dramatically, with accuracy in some tasks dropping from 84% to 51% over just three months. When you’re conducting due diligence on a $100 million acquisition, that inconsistency is terrifying.
The deal breaker for many bankers or dealmakers is that ChatGPT is fundamentally a conversational tool. It gives you snippets, suggestions, and surface-level analysis. It was not designed to produce the kind of comprehensive, cited, trustworthy research reports that serious bankers, advisors, or investors need. Try asking ChatGPT to create a 20-page competitive analysis with proper citations and watch it struggle to maintain coherence beyond page three.
Scholar Is Built By Dealmakers for Dealmakers
While ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool trying to be helpful for everyone from students to poets, Scholar is focused on powering the research needs of investment professionals who need to move fast and go deep.
The difference starts with the data. ChatGPT pulls from a general training set with knowledge cutoffs that can leave you months behind market reality. Scholar, however, combines Cyndx’s proprietary database of over 30 million companies, any uploaded documents and then combines it with trusted external sources. Plus, it integrates the Cyndx platform tools in the research results. When you’re researching a potential acquisition target, you’re getting the full picture: financials, competitive positioning, market dynamics, and risk factors all synthesized into actionable intelligence.
Unlike AI chatbots trying to be everything to everyone, Scholar is a purpose-built tool that doesn’t just summarize information. Using Agentic AI workflows, our tool validates insights across multiple sources, identifies contradictions, and builds comprehensive analyses that you can actually stake your reputation on.
So, while ChatGPT might give you a few paragraphs of generic analysis, Scholar produces comprehensive 20+ page research reports in minutes. Properly structured, fully cited, and built to the standards that investment committees expect.
Everything in One Platform
While other teams are still trying to figure out how to get reliable information from general-purpose AI tools, Scholar users are already conducting scenario analysis, exploring complex market dynamics, and validating investment theses at a speed that would have been impossible just months ago.
With ChatGPT, you get a standalone tool that requires you to verify information elsewhere, cross-reference multiple sources, and build your own research framework. More like having a research assistant who’s enthusiastic but unreliable.
In contrast, Scholar gives you everything in one integrated platform. Our proprietary company database, the external research capabilities, the synthesis engine, and the report generation that includes citations all work together seamlessly. You don’t need to juggle multiple tools, verify information across different platforms, or worry about whether your sources are accurate.
Beyond research capabilities, Cyndx’s integrated ecosystem amplifies your deal-making potential through specialized tools that work in harmony with Scholar’s insights. When your research identifies attractive investment targets, Raiser provides comprehensive fundraising intelligence to understand capital needs and timing, while Acquirer delivers strategic M&A analysis for potential acquisitions. Finder connects you directly to key decision-makers and industry contacts, transforming research discoveries into actionable relationships. This seamless integration means you’re not just gathering intelligence in isolation, but building a complete picture that flows naturally from initial research through deal sourcing, relationship building, and transaction execution, all within a single, cohesive platform that eliminates the typical inefficiencies of managing multiple disconnected tools.
The Accuracy Factor
ChatGPT is limited by computational constraints, the ability to point out inaccurate information or false faces, and inferential capability for scientific research, leading to misunderstandings or misinterpretation. In research-heavy fields like M&A, these shortfalls can be catastrophic.
Scholar’s approach to accuracy is different. Instead of generating plausible-sounding information that might be wrong, the tool cross-checks the data and provides full citations for everything. When Scholar tells you that a company’s market share is declining, it shows you exactly where that information comes from and how it was verified.
More than avoiding embarrassment in investment committee meetings, this ultimately builds the kind of confidence that allows you to move quickly on opportunities while still maintaining the rigor that serious investing demands.
The Deep Research Revolution
Investment teams are adopting AI research agents with advanced reasoning engines to improve deal sourcing, simplify initial briefings, and clarify investment theses. But not all AI research tools are created equal.
The distinction matters when we talk about “deep research”. ChatGPT can give you surface-level information quickly, but it struggles with the kind of multi-layered analysis that serious deal research requires. Scholar was built specifically for this challenge.
When you’re evaluating a potential acquisition, you need to understand not just what the company does, but how it fits into broader market trends, who its real competitors are, what regulatory challenges it faces, and how technological changes might affect its future prospects. This kind of analysis requires connecting dots across multiple domains and sources. It’s exactly what Scholar’s multi-agent architecture was designed to handle.
The Future of Deal Intelligence
Our comprehensive platform represents the next evolution in deal intelligence. While competitors are still trying to figure out how to make general-purpose AI work for finance, Cyndx has built purpose-built tools that understand the unique needs of investment professionals.
As the report conclusively laid the question to rest, “Cyndx Scholar decisively surpasses ChatGPT for sophisticated financial research and dealmaking by combining proprietary private market intelligence, a multi‐agent research‐and‐validation architecture, embedded citation mechanisms, and financial analytics — all delivered in customizable, presentation‐ready formats at unprecedented speed. For research teams and investment professionals in 2025, Scholar represents not merely an incremental upgrade, but a complete transformation of the research and diligence process.”
To be fair, we asked ChatGPT to weigh in on how Scholar compares to it, and here was the chatbot’s response: “Cyndx Scholar is purpose-built for deal professionals, generating detailed, citation-backed research reports using proprietary financial data on over 30 million companies — something ChatGPT lacks. While ChatGPT offers broad conversational versatility, it doesn’t access private financial datasets or produce ready-to-present investment reports. Scholar delivers highly structured, verified insights in minutes, tailored for M&A, VC, and PE workflows, whereas ChatGPT requires extensive prompting and manual validation. In short, Scholar is designed to accelerate deal research with professional-grade accuracy, while ChatGPT serves as a flexible but generalist AI tool.”
Need we say more?
ChatGPT opened everyone’s eyes to what’s possible with GenAI. But for dealmakers who need precision, depth, and reliability, it’s clear that general-purpose tools won’t cut it anymore. Specialized platforms like Scholar understand the unique challenges of investment research and are purpose-built from the ground up to solve them.
The deal research revolution is upon us. Learn more and make sure you’re not left behind.
