Episode summary
AI in the Investment Office: 8 CIOs on What’s Working
Capital Allocators with Ted Seides
· · 2 hr 7 min · Hosts: Ted Seides · Guests: Abby Barlow, Laura Hill, Brian Sugrue, Jenny Heller, John Lawrence, Matt Bank, Kristin Kallergis Rowland, Jon Webster
Summary
Eight CIOs describe a common theme: AI is already useful for productivity, but the real prize is better investment judgment, faster workflows, and eventually alpha. The strongest near-term uses are meeting prep, summarizing legal and manager materials, standardizing reporting, and pulling together scattered institutional knowledge. Several guests said the models are best at first drafts, not final answers, and that human review remains essential, especially when the work involves numbers, manager diligence, or consequential investment calls.
Abby Barlow of Westwood Management uses Claude almost as a full-time analyst, from meeting prep to redlining legal documents to building custom benchmarking and pacing tools. Laura Hill of Advocate Health described an internal “investment brain” called General Gist that extracts data from private markets documents into a uniform template, while keeping humans in the loop. Brian Sugrue of Shannonbridge emphasized AI as a thought partner and prep tool, but said it is not yet a decision maker. Jenny Heller of Brandywine Group Advisors is trying to turn scattered use cases into a shared operating system with trust, verification, and team training built in.
John Lawrence of Rice Management Company said the roadmap runs from better productivity to investment alpha, with daily and weekly AI summaries, meeting prep, and board memos already saving time. Across the group, the line is consistent: use AI to reduce mundane work, organize data, and sharpen questions, but preserve confidentiality, accountability, and the human edge in portfolio decisions.
Key takeaways
- Abby Barlow said Claude is being used across nearly every step of the process, including meeting prep, legal redlines, benchmarking, and investment committee materials.
- Laura Hill said Advocate Health’s internal tool General Gist is already ingesting private markets statements and capital calls into a uniform template for analyst review.
- Brian Sugrue said AI is valuable for preparation and standardization, but he does not see it as a decision maker or recommendation tool yet.
- Jenny Heller said the firm’s AI strategy centers on trust, verification, and keeping a human involved in any consequential decision.
- John Lawrence said Rice Management is using AI for daily news, weekly work summaries, meeting prep, and board memos, with the longer-term goal of alpha generation.
Notable quotes
“we are using it in every step of the process”
“The second category which is I think where we're using it the most right now is the co-pilot suite”
“we've actually created an investment brain called the private markets team has has started it and they've named it general gist”
“I think the big one, this is more like a one of those big hairy goals”
“AI to me is just such an amazing technology that can not only help us from a productivity perspective, but from an investment perspective”
How the episode opens
AI is top of mind for everyone in the investment business. Our summits are a buzz with curiosity about what others are doing. So, I asked eight chief investment officers to share how they're using AI today, including what's working and what isn't, the tools they've adopted, and where they're headed next.
They range from a single family office with one investment professional to one of the largest pension funds in the world with thousands. What emerged is a range of use cases from using AI as a personal productivity tool to changing investment workflows, organizing institutional knowledge, improving decisions, and ultimately trying to generate alpha. You'll also hear some consistency in the tools currently used and different views on how far AI should go in the investment process.
So, let's get started. We start with Abby Barlo, CIO of Westwood Management, a single family office at which she has been the sole investment professional since joining 3 years ago. Abby may offer the purest example of AI as a personal force multiplier using it across nearly every part of the investment process with her analyst named Claude.
Why don't you tell me about your role and how you're using AI in it?
I am the CIO for a single family office. I started here three years ago and we have a very small team and in fact I have not hired yet on my investment team. Part of the reason I have not hired is because I happened to start at the same time that AI was becoming a thing and have really leaned into it to, you know, support me and kind of become my analyst.
I joke with my team here in the family that um my analyst's name is Claude and um he works all hours of the night and he's amazing.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai in investment office
- cio use cases
- institutional knowledge organization
- ai workflow automation
- generating alpha
Companies and tickers mentioned
- JPM
- Westwood Management
- Advocate Health
- Shannonbridge
- Brandywine Group Advisors
- Rice Management Company
- GEM
- J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management
- CPP Investments
Watch the episode
Watch “AI in the Investment Office: 8 CIOs on What’s Working” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Capital Allocators with Ted Seides, this episode and its artwork belong to Ted Seides – Allocator and Asset Management Expert. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
