Overview
- Leaked materials indicate more than 100 former investment bankers are working on Project Mercury to help teach OpenAI’s systems financial modeling.
- Participants build Excel models for deals such as restructurings and IPOs and craft prompts while following strict formatting conventions used on Wall Street.
- Contractors reportedly receive early access to in‑development AI, and their submissions are reviewed and corrected before being integrated into OpenAI’s systems.
- The application pipeline is largely automated, starting with a roughly 20‑minute AI chatbot interview, then a financial‑statement quiz and a modeling test.
- OpenAI says it collaborates with outside experts who are recruited, managed and paid by third‑party vendors, as the company pursues industry use cases despite not yet being profitable.