PUMP 2.0 Social Analytics Platform from ZENPULSAR: Major Development in AI Field

Last week was a pivotal moment for our company and the AI-focused social analytics industry: ZENPULSAR launched PUMP 2.0 – our SaaS-based social analytics platform for financial markets. PUMP 2.0 represents a major upgrade to the original PUMP and establishes leadership positions in the industry with regard to a number of important product parameters.

Just days after the launch of the revolutionary product, we are already getting a significant number of new enquiries about PUMP 2.0. In this article, we aim to address the key enquires we receive, including what our product is; how it can benefit investors, traders, fund managers, and analysts focused on a variety of financial markets; why it is called PUMP; and what major features and improvements it offers.

Origins of Product – From GameStop Squeeze to PUMP 1.0

When Reddit-driven sentiment caused the notorious short squeeze of GameStop (GME) in early 2021, we knew that the future of the stock market and other financial markets was going to be massively affected by social media. This is how ZENPULSAR and the idea for the original PUMP platform were born in April 2021.

The original product concept encompassed the following:

1. Providing investors, traders, analysts, and fund managers focused on a variety of financial markets with a reliable way of measuring and tracking social media sentiment for specific assets, be it equities, stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrencies.

2. Leveraging state-of-the-art NLP models to measure social media sentiment in the most robust way, taking into account the prevalence of bots and malicious actors on many social platforms.

3. Developing measurement mechanisms that help and guide users of the platform in their investment strategies. For example, in addition to the standard bullish vs bearish sentiment indicators, we have developed additional sentiment calibration measures (e.g., dominating sentiment and scaled dominating sentiment) that have a strong correlation with future returns.

4. Delivering a product that acts not just as a sentiment measurement tool but also provides comprehensive social insights for platform users. For instance, PUMP 2.0 includes a social search function, a news feed, a generative AI chat bot, and other features in addition to quantified social sentiment measures for financial assets.

5. Most importantly, providing our users with a social analytics and insights platform that helps them achieve further ALPHA in their trading and investment decisions.

Why the name PUMP?

A reader might be curious as to why we chose the name PUMP for our flagship product. In fact, we received a couple of queries specifically about the product’s name.

At the time of the product conceptualisation, the infamous pump-and-dump schemes were (and unfortunately still are) aplenty in the crypto sphere. The main mechanism for spreading and promoting these schemes was/is social media. One of the key use cases for our product is providing early warning signals to investors to help protect them from these pump-and-dump schemes, e.g., via detecting spikes in bot-driven social sentiment or sentiment from non-trusted sources for a particular crypto asset.

These early warning signals are detected at the stage when the asset is being PUMPED, i.e., widely promoted to the public and potential investors as a great investment, often by having its price manipulated at the same time. Determined to help investors fight the onslaught of these sinister pump-and-dump schemes, we picked the name “PUMP’ for our platform. Naturally, helping investors avoid falling victim to such schemes is only one, though extremely important, use case of PUMP.

Throughout mid-to-late 2021, we launched PUMP 1.0 and made initial additions to its functionality. By mid-2023, PUMP had grown into one of the leading AI-based social analytics platforms.

Our efforts with PUMP 1.0 culminated in our selection by Google as one of the 13 innovative AI-focused startups across Europe and Israel to participate in the “AI First” startup accelerator program. The selection came at a time when we were already working on finalising PUMP 2.0 – a major product upgrade.

Arrival of PUMP 2.0 – Key Features and Enhancements

Launched last week, PUMP 2.0 is our main bid for a leadership position in the AI-based social analytics field. The five key conceptual goals outlined above remain intact in this new tool. What has changed in PUMP 2.0 compared to the product’s original version is:

1. We have introduced a finance-specific generative AI chat tool, PUMPChat, as part of the overall platform. PUMPChat has a similar general concept as ChatGPT but is trained and optimised specifically for finance. It acts as your financial advisor and assistant, delivering insights on equities, cryptocurrencies, commodity assets, and even alternative assets such as carbon credits.

2. PUMP 2.0 covers over 16,000 assets, a massive increase from less than 1,000 available in the original tool.

3. PUMP 2.0 sources social sentiment data from 18 global and regional social networks, including all the major ones, such as X, Reddit, LinkedIn, SeekingAlpha, Telegram, Facebook, and Weibo. This is a width of coverage unmatched in the social analytics industry.

4. PUMP 2.0 provides a much higher level of granularity when segmenting financial assets. This segmentation helps quickly get relevant insights in the user’s news feed. While the original version provided segmentation by the main asset classes – cryptocurrencies, commodities, equities, bonds, forex, alternative assets – PUMP 2.0 lets you segment in a very detailed way by sector, sub-sector, and even specific niches within a sub-sector. You can drill down to such specific areas as “climate control” or “electronic design automation” and get relevant news and insights about stocks and other assets within these highly specialised niches.

5. Our bot detection AI algorithms, which were already one of the best in the industry in the original tool, have been enhanced and feature an even higher degree of accuracy. These algorithms have now become crucial in protecting users against misinformation in light of this year’s generative AI revolution, which flooded social media platforms with chat bots producing deceptively human-like posts and comments.

6. PUMP 2.0 is based on a new infrastructural platform that makes it significantly faster.

With PUMP 1.0, ZENPULSAR aimed to bring an innovative, unique product to the market. With PUMP 2.0, our goals are more ambitious – PUMP 2.0 is designed to be the go-to industry-leading tool for any investor, trader, fund manager, analyst, or journalist who needs to get the most precise and relevant financial insights from social media. To learn more about PUMP 2.0, visit www.zenpulsar.com/pump or get in touch with us at contact@zenpulsar.com.