On May 15, 2026, OpenAI opened a preview of personal finance tools to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the United States. Users connect bank, brokerage, and card accounts through Plaid, get a dashboard covering portfolio performance, spending, subscriptions, and upcoming payments, and can then interrogate their own money in plain language.
The stakes are visible in OpenAI’s own number: more than 200 million people already ask ChatGPT financial questions every month. Moving from “ask general questions” to “read my actual accounts” is the most concrete step yet in the shift of model companies into financial verticals — and it pushes data privacy and trust to the front of the product rather than a policy page.
The Entry Points and the Dashboard
There are two ways in: hit “Get started” under the “Finances” option in the sidebar, or simply type “@Finances, connect my accounts” in a chat. Once linked, the dashboard assembles portfolio performance, spending, subscriptions, and bills about to come due.
The example prompts OpenAI highlights tell you the positioning: “I feel like I’ve been spending more recently. Has anything changed?” and “Help me build a plan to be ready to buy a house in my area in the next 5 years.” These are questions that used to require a spreadsheet plus a human advisor; they are now a single conversation. OpenAI credits the new GPT-5.5 model with stronger reasoning over connected context, and says it built a benchmark with finance experts to sharpen answer quality — sensible caution, given that a wrong answer about money costs more than a wrong answer about trivia.
Plaid and Intuit: The Data Layer
Account aggregation runs on Plaid, with access to more than 12,000 institutions — named coverage includes Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, Robinhood, American Express, and Capital One. Intuit support is planned next, which would unlock answers that need tax and credit data, such as the tax impact of selling a batch of shares or the odds of approval for a specific card.
Choosing Plaid instead of building an aggregation layer in-house signals the route OpenAI picked: aggregate existing financial infrastructure, buy speed, and accept that data fidelity and account security are now partly a partner’s responsibility. For developers, it also telegraphs trouble for standalone finance apps — when the connection layer, the model, and the interface live in one app, an independent product’s remaining moat is deeper scenario expertise, not plumbing.
Privacy and Data Controls
The controls are comparatively explicit for a first release. Disconnecting accounts lives under Settings > Apps > Finances; synced data is removed within 30 days of disconnection, and the “financial memories” the model accumulates can be reviewed or deleted item by item from the Finances page. Availability is US-only, on web and iOS, for ChatGPT Pro subscribers.
OpenAI says it will refine the product on Pro-user feedback before extending it to Plus subscribers. That Plus base is growing fast — Malta has moved to provide ChatGPT Plus to its citizens — so when and how finance features reach this much broader population is the next checkpoint for OpenAI’s consumer strategy, and for regulators watching it.
From Hiro to the Vertical Race
The team behind the feature arrived by acquisition. On April 13, 2026, OpenAI bought Hiro, an AI personal finance startup: founder Ethan Bloch — whose previous company Digit sold to Oportun for roughly $230 million — and about ten colleagues joined OpenAI, and Hiro’s service shut down on April 20. The widely read signal at the time was that OpenAI wanted financial planning inside ChatGPT. A product landing one month later confirms this was a roadmap item, not an impulse.
The competitive context is tightening at the same time. Earlier in May, Perplexity launched a financial research product built on its Computer agent, while OpenAI and Anthropic have both shipped health-oriented tools. The general-purpose chatbot race is pivoting toward vertical scenarios wired to real user data, and finance is simply the newest front. The difference this time is the bet being asked of users: hand your bank accounts to a model company, and see what it gives back.
Sources
- OpenAI launches ChatGPT for personal finance, will let you connect bank accounts — TechCrunch
- OpenAI has bought AI personal finance startup Hiro — TechCrunch
- Computer for professional finance — Perplexity
AI-assisted summary compiled from the sources above, reviewed by a human before publishing.