When AI Becomes the First Analyst: What We Learned with Deutsche Börse

The Shift from Discovery to Verification

One of the most important dynamics we discussed is what we call the “discover to verify” loop.

Investors use AI tools to form an initial view, then visit your website to confirm it.That pattern is already visible in the data we track. In fact, AI-referred visits to corporate websites have grown 240× in just over two years, with more than 1.26 million visits coming directly from AI-generated answers.

This changes the role of your IR site in a meaningful way. You are no longer the first touchpoint. You are the source of truth.

When an investor arrives, they are not exploring but are testing what they’ve already seen. They are looking for clear, specific evidence they can validate quickly and confidently.

If your content provides that, you reinforce your narrative. If it doesn’t, that narrative has already been shaped elsewhere.

You’re Now Communicating with Machines, Too

Another point that resonated strongly in our conversations with Deutsche Börse participants: your website now has two audiences.

The human audience is still there, of course. But there is now a second, equally important audience: the AI systems that read, interpret, and assemble your content into answers.

Those systems are already operating at scale. Across the environments we manage, AI-driven bots represent a significant share of activity, retrieving content in real time to answer investor questions.

This creates a different kind of visibility challenge.

Not only must your content be easily available, it must be accessible, understandable, and usable by the systems shaping investor perception before a human ever reaches your site.

Where We See Companies Falling Short

In the session, we spent time walking through where gaps tend to appear; not in effort, but in structure and specificity.

For example, while 77% of companies describe their strategy, only 20% quantify its impact. And just 11% clearly explain their business model.

These are exactly the questions investors are asking AI - and where AI often fills the gaps with third-party sources.

Many companies are doing the right things at a high level. They have strategy pages, ESG narratives, and innovation stories. But when you look at it through the lens of AI, the gaps become more apparent:

• Strategy is described, but not quantified

• Business models are implied, not clearly articulated

• Key data points are spread across formats, not consistently presented

AI doesn’t interpret nuance well. It looks for clarity, structure, and evidence.

When those elements are missing, it fills in the blanks using third-party sources. At that point, you are no longer fully in control of how your story is told.

Format Is Now a Strategic Decision

One of the more practical areas we covered was format. This is where we see many companies unintentionally limiting their visibility.

A lot of critical information still lives in PDFs, often in formats that are difficult for AI to extract. This means tables embedded as images, data locked in design-heavy layouts, and content that isn’t easily parsed.

From an AI perspective, that content is effectively invisible.

In contrast, structured HTML content can be retrieved and used in real time. That difference matters, especially as AI-driven discovery becomes more prevalent.

We focused on three questions every IR team should be asking:

• Can AI systems access your content?

• Can they understand how it is structured?

• Can they extract the key data points accurately?

If the answer to any of these is unclear, there is a gap worth addressing.

Why This Matters Now

This is not a future scenario. It is already influencing how investors build their initial perspective.

In a more volatile, more competitive capital markets environment, first impressions carry weight. And increasingly, those impressions are shaped before any direct interaction takes place.

That puts more pressure on getting the fundamentals right:

• A clear, quantified investment case

• Consistent messaging across disclosures

• Content that is structured for both human and machine audiences

More than communication priorities, these are foundational to how companies are evaluated. A growing share of search queries now end without a click,  meaning investors often form their first impression without ever visiting your website.

Partnership in Practice

Our collaboration with Deutsche Börse is part of a broader focus for us at IDX.

What became clear from the session is that most companies don’t lack awareness — they lack a clear path to execution.

Through workshops, webinars, and ongoing advisory, we support companies in:

• Understanding how the investor journey is evolving

• Identifying gaps in their current IR presence

• Improving both narrative clarity and technical accessibility

For many of the German companies we spoke with, the challenge is not awareness but in translating that awareness into clear, actionable change.

A Final Thought

AI is not replacing the investor journey but redefining where it begins. The companies that will stand out are the ones that ensure their story is not just available, but accessible, structured, and credible at the exact moment it is first being formed.

The starting point has changed.

The question now is simple: when AI forms the first impression of your company - is it your story it’s telling?

Watch the Full Session

If you weren’t able to join us for the webinar live, you can access the full recording.

If you’re interested in understanding how your own IR presence performs in this new environment, you can request a benchmarked assessment from IDX.