Excel just got its ChatGPT moment. WSJ covered Fundamental Research Labs and their new AI tool Shortcut, which can spin up entire financial models—LBOs, DCFs, you name it—in minutes. It looks and feels like Excel, but the AI does the work. All that hard-won modeling skill—the late nights linking tabs and hunting circular references—can now be skipped with a single prompt. It reminds me of what happened to writing and math. Calculators made mental math rare. Spellcheck and AI writing chipped away at the nuance of how we think. Building a model wasn’t just work—it was insight. It forced you to understand the deal in a way that a finished spreadsheet never will. AI will make modeling faster. The risk? We may raise a generation of analysts who know the answers but never learned how to think them through. https://lnkd.in/eHShhhvz