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.