LSEG today flipped the switch on an AI-powered research agent that lets financial professionals grill a chatbot with plain-English questions—and get answers backed by citations—directly inside Microsoft Teams. The new Workspace AI Search is live now, and the company says deeper hooks into Microsoft 365 Copilot are in the pipeline, though it hasn’t set a date.

Meet Workspace AI Search: Your New Financial Research Assistant

Launched on July 13, 2026, Workspace AI Search is a conversational agent that sits inside LSEG Workspace and the Workspace app for Microsoft Teams. Instead of toggling between half a dozen windows to pull up market data, SEC filings, news, and analyst reports, users can simply type a question in natural language. The agent then scours LSEG’s licensed content—including Reuters News, Deals and Aftermarket Research, plus fundamentals and pricing—and returns summarized answers, tables, or visualizations.

What sets it apart from a generic ChatGPT query is provenance. Every response includes transparent citations that let you click back to the original source, whether that’s a company filing, a news article, or a market data point. LSEG says the agent applies its own financial analytics and business logic, so it can screen markets, compare entities, summarize documents, and analyze trends without forcing you to rebuild a query from scratch at each step. Follow-up questions work conversationally, letting you dive deeper into a result.

The immediate version lives in two places: the standalone LSEG Workspace desktop application and the Workspace tab within Microsoft Teams. That Teams integration isn’t a stripped-down widget; it’s the full AI Search experience, just closer to the collaboration spaces many finance teams already use for internal chat and client coordination.

Here’s How It Affects Your Day-to-Day Work

For the everyday Windows user running Office on a personal laptop, this announcement means little. Workspace AI Search is a premium commercial capability tied to LSEG’s data subscription. But for the millions of financial analysts, traders, portfolio managers, and corporate finance professionals who live inside Microsoft 365, it could reshape a chunk of their daily routine.

Finance pros on Windows can now fire off queries like “compare Apple and Microsoft gross margins over the last five quarters” or “summarize the risk factors in Tesla’s latest 10-K” directly from a Teams chat—without launching a separate terminal or web browser. Because the agent retains context, you can drill down with “show me only the litigation risks” or “turn that into a bar chart.” The time saved on manual data gathering could be substantial, especially for junior staff who often spend hours stitching together reports.

IT admins and compliance officers face a different set of considerations. This is not a free Teams add-on that users can enable themselves. It’s part of an LSEG Workspace license, and your organization must have the appropriate entitlements. Data access is governed by your firm’s LSEG subscription—meaning the agent can only search content you already pay for. Still, admins should verify that the AI’s query logging and data flows align with internal compliance rules, particularly if users start pasting client-sensitive information or generating outputs that end up in external communications.

Power users and team leads will want to consider how the tool changes workflows. For example, an equity research associate could use the agent to generate a first draft of a company comparison table inside Teams, then drag that into a Excel or a PowerPoint deck once Copilot integration matures. Until then, copying and pasting is the bridge.

The Road to Full Copilot Integration

LSEG’s announcement explicitly calls out “Microsoft 365 Copilot support” as the next milestone. While the company hasn’t shared a release date or detailed what that integration looks like, the implications are significant.

Instead of asking a question inside the LSEG Workspace silo, users would trigger the agent from within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. Imagine drafting a client note in Word and prompting Copilot to pull LSEG’s latest P/E ratios for a list of companies, or inserting a Reuters market summary into a presentation without leaving PowerPoint. Because Copilot is extensible, LSEG’s data could become as accessible as any built-in Microsoft 365 function—subject, of course, to your organization’s licensing agreements.

For IT departments, the preparation is two-pronged. You’ll need to ensure your Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment and governance policies can accommodate third-party plugins. And you’ll need to talk to your LSEG account team about how Copilot access will be priced and provisioned. Early conversations now could avoid delays later.

Why Financial AI Needed a Citation-First Approach

The launch didn’t happen in a vacuum. Financial firms have been dabbling with large language models since late 2022, but two problems kept them from going all-in: hallucination and opacity. When a chatbot invents a stock price or misattributes a quote, the consequences aren’t just embarrassing—they can be regulatory violations.

LSEG’s answer is to make source-level citations a core design element, not an afterthought. By anchoring every answer to a specific dataset or document, the agent gives users a clear audit trail. This matters for anyone whose work faces SEC, FINRA, or internal compliance review. It also aligns with a broader industry push for “explainable AI” in finance.

On the Windows side, the deeper story is about workflows merging. LSEG (formerly Refinitiv) has long competed with Bloomberg Terminal, but the game is shifting from data ubiquity to integration. Bloomberg launched BloombergGPT, but LSEG’s move to plant its agent directly into Teams—where many financial discussions already happen—gives it a practical edge for Microsoft-centric shops. When Copilot support arrives, that edge could widen.

Your Next Steps: Getting Started and Preparing for Copilot

If your firm already uses LSEG Workspace, here’s what you can do today:

  • Check your version. Workspace AI Search requires the latest release of LSEG Workspace and the Workspace for Teams app. Your admin may need to push an update.
  • Enable the feature. It may be a toggle in your Workspace preferences or at the firm level. Contact your LSEG representative if it’s not visible.
  • Start with simple, high-value queries. Ask for a comparison of EPS estimates for two stocks you cover, or a summary of today’s top Reuters News. The citation links will build trust quickly.
  • Train your team. A 15-minute walkthrough on phrasing effective prompts—and on verifying citations—can accelerate adoption. Users who treat it like a search engine will get the most out of it.
  • Review data governance. Ensure that any information gleaned from the agent is handled according to your firm’s data classification and retention policies. If in doubt, consult your compliance team.

For those awaiting Copilot integration, patience is key. No one outside LSEG knows the timeline. But you can start thinking about how you’d use it. Would you generate Excel models with live data? Draft pitchbooks that pull from filings? Map out those use cases now, and ask your LSEG rep whether they’ll be supported. Early feedback to the vendor often shapes the final product.

What’s Next: The Agentification of Finance in Microsoft 365

Workspace AI Search is more than a one-off product release. It’s a signal that domain-specific agents are moving into the heart of productivity suites. Microsoft has been courting ISVs to build Copilot extensions, and financial data providers are an obvious early adopter category.

Look for Bloomberg, S&P Global, and others to follow suit, either with their own Teams integrations or Copilot plugins. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the question won’t be “can I query financial data with AI?” but “which platform’s AI agent do I trust most?” LSEG’s head start with citations gives it a strong answer, but execution will determine whether it keeps the lead.

For Windows-based finance teams, the desktop is about to get a lot smarter. Whether you’re an admin, an analyst, or a power user, the moment calls for familiarizing yourself with the new tool, tightening governance, and keeping an eye on the Copilot roadmap. The AI agent that can answer your research questions today may soon be writing your reports tomorrow.