What Caddi measured
Caddi's 2026 State of AI at Enterprise RIAs covers the 455 largest independent wealth management RIAs, ranked by SEC Form ADV assets. RIA stands for registered investment adviser. The data comes from two public sources: each firm's job postings since late 2023 and its current employees' LinkedIn profiles. Caddi counted whether a firm's postings named an AI tool or asked for AI skills.
Caddi is not a neutral party. InvestmentNews describes it as a Seattle-based startup that sells AI agents to automate RIA back-office work. Caddi's own site markets itself as an alternative or complement to Copilot. Treat the framing with that in mind, though the counts come from public postings.
The headline numbers
- Adoption in hiring: In Q3 2026, 19.4% of independent RIAs that posted jobs had at least one post naming an AI tool. That is 39 of 201 firms, up from 1.1% two years earlier. The denominator is firms that posted jobs that quarter, not all 455.
- Overall reach: Since late 2023, 76 of the 455 firms have posted at least one job mentioning AI.
- 12-month tool counts: Copilot appeared at 29 firms, ChatGPT at 27 (up from seven) and Claude at 26 (up from three). Another 35 firms mentioned AI skills without naming a product, up from nine.
- Since late 2023: Per InvestmentNews, Copilot appeared at 34 firms, ChatGPT at 32 and Claude at 27. Another 41 firms named no specific product.
- Advisor-specific tools: The notetaker Zocks appeared at seven firms. That is the only advisor-specific tool among the most-named products, level with Google Gemini and behind direct mentions of OpenAI's GPT models (eight).
Each count is firms with at least one mention. It is not total job ads, and categories may overlap.
Size matters
The pattern is concentrated at the top of the market. Eight of the 10 largest independents have posted at least one job naming an AI tool. So have 63.6% of firms with $25 billion to $100 billion in assets. InvestmentNews reports the share falls to 26.5% for firms with $10 billion to $25 billion. It is about one in 10 for firms between $2.5 billion and $10 billion, and zero below $2.5 billion.
Some big firms are also hiring to build on large language models directly. About 21% of firms in the $25 billion to $100 billion band posted such roles. That falls to 7.4% in the next band down and is close to zero below that. The reporting does not define "building directly" more precisely.
Why Microsoft shops should care
General-purpose assistants are appearing in job requirements ahead of specialist tools. For IT teams at professional-services firms, that has practical consequences:
- Licensing and tenant readiness. If a job ad names Copilot, someone has to govern it. That means Microsoft 365 permissions, data labeling and retention. This is general industry reasoning, not something Caddi's data shows.
- Tool sprawl. Firms listing Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude are likely running several assistants at once. Caddi's own marketing says large firms usually end up with more than one tool, though that is a vendor claim.
- Recordkeeping. Anthropic's advisor materials recommend Enterprise plans because they include audit logs that support recordkeeping. Regulated firms will want similar audit trails from whichever assistant they choose.
- Competition from the connector race. Anthropic's Claude for Financial Advisors adds connectors to custodians and CRMs. Anthropic's page also lists Microsoft 365 among Claude's existing connectors. The line between general-purpose and vertical tools is blurring.
Caveats
A job posting is a wish list, not a deployment report. Caddi's figures do not show how many employees use Copilot or how much they use it. They also do not show whether it saves money. Caddi CEO Alejandro Castellano put it this way: "The largest RIAs have stopped asking whether to use AI." He added that the open question for 2027 is whether firms can show AI changed their cost of running the business, and that very few can today.
Other limits:
- The reporting does not disclose coding rules or per-firm posting volumes, so the counts can't be independently reproduced.
- Caddi's separate survey of 17 operations leaders found 53% pay for an advisor notetaker. That is too small a sample to generalize.
- Schwab's separate advisor study, per InvestmentNews, found 7% of advisors use agentic AI and 26% want candidates fluent in AI tools. Schwab's study covers self-reported advisor use, not job-ad language, and it names no specific product.
Bottom line
In the largest RIAs' hiring language, Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude are roughly neck and neck. Copilot is slightly ahead on both the 12-month and long-term counts. Advisor-specific products barely register. Whether that reflects real deployment, or only recruiters borrowing familiar brand names, is something this dataset can't say.