Preprints surface days after a discovery. Years before the patents, the funding rounds, the analyst coverage. Finch Signal tracks that signal across 73 themes — daily and monthly.
Scientific papers appear within days of a discovery — years before patents, funding rounds, and analyst coverage. Finch Signal captures that signal systematically — daily and monthly.
Every major technology wave showed up first as an early signal at the research stage — a surge in activity years before the patents, the funding, and the analyst coverage caught up.
Each theme's research intensity was already elevated in Finch's data years before the market moment. Lead times are indicative, drawn from monthly research-momentum signals since January 2020.
Preprint velocity in GLP-1 receptor agonists surged 180% before any major pharma coverage. The signal was unambiguous two years before Ozempic became a household name.
Research output at the intersection of deep learning and molecular biology began compounding well before the sector attracted major venture capital attention.
Efficiency research publications in perovskite photovoltaics doubled over two years, well ahead of the commercial investment wave that followed into the sector.
Publication velocity in autonomous agents and reasoning sat at the highest tier from early 2020 — years before “agentic AI” became the defining enterprise and venture theme of 2024–25.
Electrolysis and green-hydrogen publication momentum re-accelerated through 2021–22, ahead of the US Inflation Reduction Act's hydrogen production credits and the global electrolyzer capex wave that followed.
Structured CSV and Parquet. Monthly datasets update on the 1st; the Daily Signal refreshes every business day. Every dataset covers all 73 themes — with the monthly record running 78 months back to January 2020.
| theme | momentum_score | research_volume | growth_3m_pct | trend | sector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithium-Ion & Battery Management | 71 | 75 | +4.1 | accelerating | EN |
| Neuromorphic & In-Memory Computing | 70 | 41 | +6.8 | accelerating | AI |
| Green Hydrogen & Electrolysis | 69 | 49 | +2.0 | steady | EN |
| GLP-1 & Incretin Therapies | 68 | 21 | +5.2 | accelerating | LS |
| Obesity & Metabolic Therapeutics | 68 | 15 | +3.7 | accelerating | LS |
| Algorithmic Trading & Quant Finance | 68 | 84 | +1.4 | steady | DE |
| Perovskite & Tandem Solar | 67 | 74 | +2.9 | steady | EN |
| AI Agents & Reasoning | 65 | 88 | +7.5 | accelerating | AI |
| keyword | signal_strength | tier | sector | broad_theme | trajectory_direction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| on-policy distillation | 88 | Tier 1 | AI & Computing | Generative AI | accelerating |
| agent harness | 88 | Tier 1 | AI & Computing | Generative AI | accelerating |
| thin-film lithium | 81 | Tier 1 | Energy & Climate | Battery | accelerating |
| coding agents | 80 | Tier 1 | AI & Computing | Generative AI | accelerating |
| matched cohort | 77 | Tier 1 | Life Sciences & Healthcare | Digital Health | accelerating |
| wide bandgap perovskite | 76 | Tier 1 | Energy & Climate | Renewables | linear |
| floating offshore wind | 76 | Tier 1 | Energy & Climate | Renewables | accelerating |
| electronic health record | 76 | Tier 2 | Life Sciences & Healthcare | Digital Health | linear |
| theme | top_keywords | keyword_growth_pcts | keyword_directions |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Agents & Reasoning | llm agents|question answering|policy distillation | 91.5|78.4|66.0 | accelerating|accelerating|linear |
| GLP-1 & Incretin Therapies | weight loss|pancreatic islet|glucose control | 84.2|71.0|58.3 | accelerating|linear|steady |
| Large Language Models & NLP | llm agents|question answering|diffusion language | 88.0|74.6|62.1 | accelerating|linear|linear |
| Solid-State & Next-Gen Batteries | solid electrolyte|lithium metal|ion batteries | 76.4|68.0|54.2 | accelerating|linear|steady |
| Green Hydrogen & Electrolysis | water electrolysis|green hydrogen|electrolyzer | 72.1|63.5|49.8 | linear|steady|steady |
| Perovskite & Tandem Solar | perovskite solar|tandem cells|solar cells | 79.3|66.7|52.0 | accelerating|linear|steady |
| Obesity & Metabolic Therapeutics | appetite regulation|adipose tissue|weight loss | 70.5|61.2|47.0 | linear|steady|steady |
| Neuromorphic & In-Memory Computing | in-memory compute|spiking neural|memristor array | 82.0|69.4|55.1 | accelerating|linear|steady |
| date | theme | innovation_momentum | historical_percentile | momentum_direction | is_surge | daily_rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-17 | Lithium-Ion & Battery Management | 82 | 91 | up | yes | 1 |
| 2026-06-17 | GLP-1 & Incretin Therapies | 79 | 88 | up | yes | 2 |
| 2026-06-17 | Neuromorphic & In-Memory Computing | 76 | 84 | up | — | 3 |
| 2026-06-17 | Green Hydrogen & Electrolysis | 74 | 79 | flat | — | 4 |
| 2026-06-17 | AI Agents & Reasoning | 71 | 72 | up | — | 5 |
| 2026-06-17 | Perovskite & Tandem Solar | 68 | 68 | flat | — | 6 |
| 2026-06-16 | Chip Architecture & Adv. Packaging | 66 | 65 | down | — | 7 |
| 2026-06-16 | Algorithmic Trading & Quant Finance | 63 | 61 | flat | — | 8 |
Four views into the live index — momentum trajectories across nine themes since 2020, the current leaders, and the fastest-rising research terms. All drawn from the same monthly data we deliver.
A systematic, four-stage pipeline converts raw preprint publications into structured investment signals — no manual curation, no subjective scoring.
Monthly ingestion of academic preprints from the largest open-access repositories for frontier research. Over 1.3M papers classified since January 2020.
Each abstract is classified into one or more of 73 investment-relevant technology themes using a proprietary taxonomy validated against expert panels. 99.3% classification accuracy.
Monthly publication velocity is normalised into a 0–100 momentum score per theme. Scores account for baseline volume, growth rate, and 3-month acceleration to separate signal from noise.
Four datasets: Monthly Momentum, Theme Emergence, and Rising Keywords on the 1st of each month, plus a Daily Signal updated every business day — with country-level activity embedded in each.
The index is used by investors, strategists, and advisors who need a quantitative foundation for technology thesis work — not a narrative, a dataset.
Identify emerging categories 2–4 years before deal flow appears. Build data-backed thesis documents before the sector has a name.
Scan adjacent technical domains for threats and opportunities. Build R&D pipeline maps grounded in publication velocity, not analyst opinion.
Validate target company positioning against underlying research trends. Identify sectors approaching peak publication velocity before valuation follows.
Systematic, monthly signals across 73 themes. Integrate preprint momentum into quantitative models as a leading factor for technology-sector positioning.
Deliver technology landscape assessments backed by publication data, not keyword searches. Differentiate strategy reports with proprietary signal intelligence.
License structured feeds to enrich alternative data products. Four clean datasets, consistent schema, CSV and Parquet on daily and monthly cadences.
Over 1.3 million papers classified. 73 investment-relevant themes. Four datasets — Monthly Momentum, Theme Emergence, Rising Keywords, and a Daily Signal.
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