For decades, financial analysts have relied on spreadsheets that trace their roots back to the 1980s. Despite enormous advances in markets and data, the core tools used on Wall Street remain largely unchanged. A group of MBA students from China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) decided that needed to change.

Their answer is FiMo Copilot, a software platform that treats financial models not as static spreadsheets but as dynamic, queryable structures. Analysts can bypass repetitive manual work and instead ask direct questions—such as how a valuation might shift if a company segments the North American market by a new product line—and receive an auditable answer in seconds rather than days.

The system also processes unstructured sources like reports, PDFs, and news articles, converting them into structured data that can be used to build models and run valuations automatically. For many firms, this reduces reliance on armies of junior staff who spend as much as 80% of their time cleaning data. According to early users, a 10-person deal team can now perform at the efficiency level of just three or four senior professionals, cutting diligence processes from months to weeks.

A Team Born in the Classroom

FiMo Copilot’s founding story began at CEIBS.

  • Jieqin Mo, a former M&A advisor, knew the pain of building financial models late into the night, rarely returning home before midnight.
  • Mengqi Jin, a lifelong coder with a focus on artificial intelligence, saw the potential to reimagine how industries work.
  • In project collaborations, the two clicked immediately, blending finance pain points with technical possibilities.
  • Soon, Xinyuan Wang, a classmate with a Silicon Valley software engineering background, joined the effort.
  • Rounding out the founding team was Heng Zhan, the husband of another MBA peer, who had just returned from a stint in the tech sector and a period of reflection abroad.

What started as late-night brainstorming in an MBA classroom has since grown into a company aiming to modernize financial analysis.

Backing, Expansion, and the Next Generation

The startup has already caught the attention of major tech players. FiMo Copilot was admitted into programs by Nvidia and Amazon and reached the semifinals of Amazon’s startup accelerator. With institutional support, the team began building not just a product but also a pipeline of talent.

Among the next generation of managers and directors are several with Wall Street experience, including internships at J.P. Morgan’s Hong Kong quantitative division:

  • Nan Lin, a candidate for operations director, is described by peers as ambitious, turning down the option of inheriting a family business to pursue broader horizons.
  • Boyang Li, a top computer science student from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, is a contender for technical director, recognized for his coding abilities.
  • Jingwen Cao and Yang Li, two women focused quietly but intensely on financial markets, are candidates for financial modeling directors. Colleagues call them “researchers” for their dedication to building and refining trading models.
  • The team also draws strength from a growing pool of excellent interns, including Zizhen Wang, Xingle Zhou, Yizhou Zhang, Zihan Chen, Youming Zhao, Yijiang Wan, Xinyu Hu, Florent Han, Pengyu Wang, and Yuxiang Zhang who bring fresh perspectives and execution power.

Looking Forward

FiMo Copilot is still early in its journey, but its proposition is clear: streamline financial modeling, reduce inefficiency, and allow analysts to spend more time on strategy rather than data entry. Whether it becomes a mainstay on Wall Street will depend on adoption, but for now, what began as a classroom idea is steadily gaining momentum in one of the most tradition-bound corners of global finance.