Nasdaq launches agentic AI for capital markets operations

By Divya Shah

Nasdaq has launched an agentic AI operating environment within its Nasdaq Calypso platform, aimed at helping financial institutions deploy, manage and scale AI-driven workflows across capital markets and treasury operations. 

The new framework was introduced to address barriers that have slowed the large-scale adoption of AI agents in regulated financial environments. By creating a governed operating environment, Nasdaq enables institutions to run and connect AI agents across the trade lifecycle while maintaining operational controls and oversight. 

The environment provides access to Nasdaq Calypso’s native AI agents and allows clients to integrate their own AI infrastructure through a layer built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an emerging standard designed to connect AI agents with enterprise software systems. 

Magnus Haglind, Head of Capital Markets Technology at Nasdaq, said, “For institutions to adopt AI agents at scale, they need a trusted, governed infrastructure inside the capital market platforms they already run, a place to connect agents from many different sources to real workflows, data, and controls. By integrating agentic capabilities and serving as the orchestration layer, we are evolving Nasdaq Calypso from a system of record into an intelligent platform that automates activity at every stage of the trade lifecycle.” 

The operating environment was designed with strict governance measures, including sandboxing, live oversight and controls that prevent external data retention. AI agents can operate on Nasdaq Calypso’s trading, risk and collateral records while also drawing on additional enterprise, market and reference data sources. 

Alongside the launch, Nasdaq introduced its first agentic capability within the platform, a natural-language assistant that allows users to query platform data, documentation and related information. The tool is intended to improve productivity, simplify data analysis and document review, and support faster decision-making. 

Nasdaq said additional governed agentic workers will be introduced to help automate manual processes that continue to create operational inefficiencies across capital markets workflows. 

The agents will be hosted by Nasdaq and delivered through the cloud-based Nasdaq Calypso environment, which is built on Amazon Bedrock. The infrastructure is intended to provide the scalability and governance controls required for AI deployment in regulated financial institutions. Clients running Nasdaq Calypso on-premises will also be able to connect to the same AI services. 

The launch builds on Nasdaq’s broader AI strategy across its financial technology portfolio, including AI capabilities within Nasdaq Verafin and Nasdaq AxiomSL, as the company continues to expand the use of AI-driven automation across financial services.