Morgan Stanley to open trillion-dollar wealth management channel to AI agents

Morgan Stanley is opening its equity management platforms ShareWorks and Equity Edge to external AI agents. This will allow client companies' autonomous agents to extract data and gain insights directly from the platform, bypassing the existing human-centric software interface.

This move aims to help corporate clients manage increasingly complex equity compensation plans without adding headcount. Morgan Stanley has already granted agent access to some clients, and plans to expand this to 3,400 managed client companies by next year.

Morgan Stanley utilizes the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open source standard that allows AI models to connect to data sources. This strategy responds to the inflection point in software where, instead of users logging directly into websites, AI agents become the primary interface.

Unlike competitors such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which utilize AI agents internally, Morgan Stanley is differentiating itself by allowing direct connections from external agents. Through this, Morgan Stanley is expected to be able to efficiently scale its services based on proprietary data and business logic.