Anthropic launched a personal finance feature for its Claude assistant on Thursday, letting U.S. paid subscribers connect bank and credit card accounts through Plaid and ask questions about spending, bills, and remaining balances. The beta is available on Claude Pro, Max, and Ultra plans, which cost $20, $100, and $200 per month respectively when billed monthly through the web.
The new feature, called Personal Finance, is read-only. Claude can see account balances, credit limits, account names and types, the last four digits of account numbers, and up to 24 months of transaction history from approved accounts. It can summarize spending, spot duplicate charges or unexpected fees, explain interest payments, and build charts or bill calendars. Anthropic said Claude cannot move, manage, or invest user money, and the finance hub contains no ads or sponsored recommendations. The company also said conversations inside Personal Finance are not used to train its models, though users are advised to verify AI-generated figures against bank records.
The rollout came with an accusation from crypto investor Anthony Pompliano, who said Anthropic tried to extract proprietary information from his startup Silvia months before the launch. Pompliano alleged that Anthropic personnel began approaching Silvia engineers in April, claiming they were interested in the startup's growth and computing needs. He described an alleged steak dinner involving Anthropic representatives and a claim that the meal was on CEO Dario Amodei's tab. Pompliano said his engineers declined to share sensitive details and that someone at Anthropic later warned his team about the upcoming launch. He called Claude's product a wrapper masquerading as a personal finance tool and said Silvia's computing costs are roughly 97% lower when using its own models and hardware instead of frontier AI models.
Anthropic is not the first general-purpose chatbot maker to move into personal finance. OpenAI launched similar bank connections for ChatGPT in May, also using Plaid for read-only access to financial information. ChatGPT initially offered the feature as a preview for U.S. Pro subscribers, expanded to Plus in June, and began reaching Free and Go users in October. OpenAI has since added weekly insights, investment dashboards, credit monitoring, and voice support, and reports that ChatGPT receives over 200 million money-related inquiries every month.
Both Claude Personal Finance and ChatGPT's personal finance feature rely on Plaid, which connects more than 12,000 financial institutions and provides account connections, transaction data, and user permissions behind these tools. Anthropic says Personal Finance is a first step and that it is exploring partnerships with licensed professionals and regulated financial firms. For now, the beta is restricted to U.S. customers on the three paid Claude plans.
The broader context highlights rising consumer interest in AI-powered financial assistance. McKinsey warned in April 2026 that AI agents could become consumers' main banking interface, with 23% of surveyed consumers using generative AI for financial tasks at least once a month. A Bain analysis of 6,000 consumer prompts in Australia found roughly one-third of banking queries concerned home loans, while a 2026 survey of 2,170 South Korean adults found that 67.8% had used large language models for at least one financial task. Deloitte found that only 49% of surveyed U.S. bank customers trusted generative AI for product research, compared with 79% for bank websites, and 83% were concerned about AI acting on their finances without permission. The OECD also warned in 2026 about incorrect answers, bias, privacy risks, and hidden commercial influence in AI financial tools.
