Ok here goes. The 60s and early 70s were a golden age for financial research and modern finance was borne out of the work done at MiT and UChicago culminating with Black Scholes in 73. In the early 80s quants came to Wall Street - I believe the quant desk at GS was started by Fischer Black in 83. To trade securities at that time you called a human on the floor of the exchange and paid $2 commission to settle something on a piece of paper priced in teenths that settled in hours to days. 50pc of volumes were blocks. Today, commissions are less than a penny, trading is electronic, done by machines, priced in decimals, and the exchanges are museums. Frictions were removed so the models could trade. Through this time there were periods where competitive advantage (alpha) degraded, but markets continued to evolve. Model companies selling outcomes feels very similar. End of the day what’s every company on earth trying to do? Move inventory, capture wallet, create a positive return on capital. The lift will come from better questions (agents and models) and better portfolio construction of inputs. Two models using the same data the same way will see price compression over time. I expect model companies to start raiding Wall Street for risk professionals if they haven’t already. I expect Wall Street to respond with model companies of their own, especially when regulation comes. This will flow thru the value chain.