The transformed Morningstar Direct experience includes an all-new interface and purpose-built agents that are designed to help clients answer complex, high-value questions and reach decisions with greater clarity and confidence.

Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment insights, today launched Morningstar Direct AI, a reimagined, agentic software experience for its flagship platform. Live today for global users, Direct AI is designed to allow investment professionals to uncover insights, explore opportunities, and perform analysis that was previously fragmented across tools, dependent on institutional knowledge, or required considerable manual workarounds.

"AI and agents are only as valuable as the data that powers them," said Scott Brown, President, Direct Platform at Morningstar. "With Direct AI, we're putting the full breadth of our independent research, data, and insights into agents that fit naturally into clients' workflows. It accelerates our mission to empower investor success."

In addition to an all-new, browser-based interface, Direct AI initially introduces three agents built specifically for the mission-critical tasks our clients value most:

Product Development Agent helps asset managers fine tune their product positioning and launch decisions. It combines Morningstar flows data and category analysis to help answer questions like "Which Morningstar categories show strong demand but limited competition?" and "How long did comparable products take to reach $1 billion in assets?"
Distribution Agent helps sales and marketing teams working to get funds onto a firm’s approved list or into a model portfolio. Using proprietary Morningstar classifications and portfolio tools, including those designed to analyze portfolios that hold both public and private securities, this agent identifies gaps in an existing model portfolio, demonstrates where a given fund could fit, and shows how it would change the model. Then it can help prepare talking points for the review meeting.
Manager Research Agent helps due diligence teams vet investment strategies. It applies the same framework Morningstar's analysts use to evaluate portfolios, using Morningstar’s deep datasets to help answer questions like "Has this fund’s trading behavior changed recently?" and "Which market environments have helped or hurt performance?"

Each of the agents is grounded in Morningstar's data, analytics, research, and ratings that span millions of securities and entities across a diverse range of asset classes, including funds, equities, fixed income, and a variety of other financial products. Backed by the firm’s more than 1,100 research analysts globally, Morningstar’s investment experience and proprietary frameworks—from Morningstar Categories and Medalist Ratings to the new Active/Passive Strategy Type and Semiliquid Adjusted Cost Estimate—are built into the logic, and can help investment professionals make more informed, defensible decisions.

Alongside Direct AI, Morningstar is making its investment intelligence available through Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT, aimed at helping users access answers and insights wherever they choose to work

To learn more about Direct AI, visit www.morningstar.com/business/products/direct/direct-ai.

About Morningstar, Inc.

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment insights in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets, and alliances and redistributors. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $375 billion in AUMA as of June 30, 2026. The Company operates through wholly-owned subsidiaries in 32 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on X @MorningstarInc.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is used in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on our current expectations about future events or future financial performance. Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, and often contain words such as "designed to," "built to," " consider," "future," "maintain," "may," "expect," "potential," "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "will," or the negative thereof, and similar expressions. These statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause the events we discuss not to occur or to differ significantly from what we expect. For us, these risks and uncertainties include, among other things, failing to innovate our product and service offerings or anticipate our clients’ changing needs, failing to achieve the anticipated benefits of Direct AI, and failing to launch AI agents on a timely basis or at all. A more complete description of these risks and uncertainties can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including our most recent Reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. If any of these risks and uncertainties materialize, our actual future results and other future events may vary significantly from what we expect. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law. You are, however, advised to review any further disclosures we make on related subjects, and about new or additional risks, uncertainties and assumptions in our filings with the SEC on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K.

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Media contact: Allison Phelps | Newsroom@morningstar.com