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Techday NZ
12-05-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Extend unveils open-source AI toolkit for smarter finance
Extend has released an open-source AI toolkit aimed at enhancing how businesses manage and analyse financial data. The toolkit supports multiple frameworks, including Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenAI, native integration with LangChain, and compatibility with CrewAI to facilitate complex multi-agent workflows. The company states that this versatility allows businesses to incorporate Extend's API seamlessly into their existing AI-driven systems, enabling more advanced spend analysis and automated finance processes. The toolkit is designed to offer flexibility to businesses, allowing them to interact with Extend while continuing to use their preferred banks or credit cards. Its intention is to help organisations adopt AI solutions tailored to their needs, supporting functions such as intelligent financial queries, custom reporting, and workflow automation. Jonathan Bailey, Extend's Chief Technology Officer, commented on the motivation behind the toolkit: "When I started to explore the multitude of use cases for AI in our industry, I zeroed in on the power of 'agentic frameworks', and realised we could enable tools like Claude to interact directly with Extend via our APIs and immediately unlock extensive AI functionality for our customers." Through the integration of these frameworks, users are able to query financial data using natural language input, conduct advanced analytics, and generate custom reports. Automation powered by AI agents can manage tasks such as expense categorisation and budget tracking. Businesses will also be able to analyse spending patterns, identify cost-saving opportunities, and obtain greater insights into areas such as cash flow, team spending, and overall budget allocations. Andrew Jamison, Extend's Chief Executive Officer and co-founder explained the broader company strategy: "At Extend, we believe in empowering businesses to do more with what they already have - whether that's credit lines, banking relationships, or software investments. With this AI toolkit, we're taking that mission to the next level, giving our customers the tools they need to make smarter, faster, and more informed decisions." Extend indicated that development efforts will continue to focus on expanding AI automation features within its platform, in response to increasing demand from companies seeking more streamlined financial management solutions. Extend is a modern spend and expense management platform that helps businesses gain control over spending - without changing their existing bank or credit card programs. Thousands of companies use Extend to create and manage virtual cards, streamline payment workflows, and get real-time visibility into team and vendor spend. According to the company, Extend powers billions of dollars in transactions while partnering with the financial institutions businesses already trust.
Techday NZ
09-05-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Extend launches open-source AI toolkit for smarter financial data
Extend has introduced an open-source AI toolkit designed to enhance the way businesses interact with and analyse their financial data. The spend and expense management platform has released this toolkit with compatibility for Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenAI, LangChain, and CrewAI, allowing businesses to seamlessly integrate Extend's API into their own AI-driven systems. This move aims to make spend analysis and workflow automation more accessible and customisable for companies with varying internal infrastructures and needs. By supporting several widely used frameworks, the toolkit is intended to provide businesses with significant autonomy in selecting the software and financial institutions suited to their operations. It enables integration and interaction with Extend's API for custom AI workflows, which include data queries, report generation, workflow automation, and expense management operations. Jonathan Bailey, Chief Technology Officer at Extend, said, "When I started to explore the multitude of use cases for AI in our industry, I zeroed in on the power of 'agentic frameworks', and realized we could enable tools like Claude to interact directly with Extend via our APIs and immediately unlock extensive AI functionality for our customers." This facility allows users to interact with their financial data using natural language, facilitating advanced analytics, tailored reporting, and the automation of processes such as expense categorisation and budget tracking. Companies leveraging the toolkit can deploy AI agents to review spending trends, spot opportunities to reduce costs, and obtain more nuanced insights into cash flow management, budget allocations, and payment behaviours across teams. The introduction of the open-source AI toolkit follows Extend's approach of supporting businesses in using their existing banking relationships and credit card programmes while providing enhanced financial technology solutions. As the company highlights, the added AI element aims to further customer empowerment by improving efficiency and offering more granular financial insights. Andrew Jamison, Extend's Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, commented, "At Extend, we believe in empowering businesses to do more with what they already have—whether that's credit lines, banking relationships, or software investments. With this AI toolkit, we're taking that mission to the next level, giving our customers the tools they need to make smarter, faster, and more informed decisions." Extend's AI toolkit is being positioned as a resource for businesses seeking to streamline financial processes without major changes to their existing infrastructure. The company states that the toolkit is part of its broader effort to combine AI with spend and expense management for enhanced control of business finances. Development plans are in place at Extend to further expand AI automation features in its platform, according to the company. These future enhancements are expected to continue the trajectory towards more automated and efficient financial management solutions for business clients.
