How to check an AI equity research tool answer against the filing

To check an AI equity research tool answer, open the filing it cites and confirm six things: the company, the period, the line item, the unit and currency, the reporting basis, and any arithmetic. If the answer gives no source you can open, treat its figures as unverified.

We build Clarifo, a financial data product for US and Nordic listed companies in which every figure links to the filing and page it came from. This guide sets out the checklist and works through it on a real figure: the fiscal 2026 revenue of Costco Wholesale Corporation (Nasdaq: COST), which turns out to depend on which revenue line you mean.

Why AI equity research answers need checking

An AI equity research tool combines two things: a data source and a language model that writes the answer. The data source can be precise and the answer can still be wrong, because the model chose the wrong column, mixed two periods, or rounded a figure into a different unit. Most errors are not invented numbers; they are real numbers attached to the wrong label.

That is why checking means going back to the document. A second AI answer that agrees with the first proves little if both drew from the same mislabelled figure. The filing is the reference.

A six-point checklist for any AI equity research tool answer

The table lists the six checks, what to look for in the filing, and the question to ask the tool when something does not match.

Source: Clarifo editorial checklist.

Checks 2 and 3 catch most problems. The worked example below is a check 3 case.

Worked example: verifying Costco's FY2026 revenue in the 10-K

We asked for Costco's latest annual figures. The answer gave fiscal 2026, the year ended 30 August 2026, from Costco's Form 10-K: revenue of $303,154 million, net income of $9,226 million and diluted EPS of $20.76.¹

We then searched the 10-K for the passage that discusses the year and opened the cited page with the figure highlighted. The MD&A summary in Item 7 does not mention $303,154 million at all. It says net sales increased 10% to $297,247 million, and that membership fee revenue increased 11% to $5,907 million.²

The table puts the total from the answer next to the two lines the filing reports.

Source: Costco Wholesale Corporation Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 30 August 2026 (accession 0000909832-26-000093): XBRL financial data and Item 7 MD&A.¹²³

The figures reconcile: $297,247 million in net sales plus $5,907 million in membership fees equals $303,154 million in total revenue (our calculation from reported figures). The prior year follows the same pattern: our data shows FY2025 revenue of $275,235 million (from Costco's FY2025 10-K), and the 10-K shows FY2025 net sales of $269,912 million and membership fees of $5,323 million.³

Neither figure is wrong, but they answer different questions. An answer that says "Costco's revenue grew 10% to $303 billion" would combine the growth rate of net sales with the total of a different line. The growth rate the filing prints, 10%, belongs to net sales; membership fees grew 11%. Checking the label (check 3) and whether the percentage is printed or computed (check 6) catches this in under a minute.

The same 10-K also confirms the other figures in the answer: net income increased 14% to $9,226 million, or $20.76 per diluted share, compared with $8,099 million and $18.21 in fiscal 2025.²

How Clarifo makes each figure traceable to its source

Verification is only practical if the source is one click away. In our product, the citation for a US figure opens the filing on SEC EDGAR at the cited section with the text highlighted; for Nasdaq Helsinki and Nasdaq Stockholm companies it opens a rendered page of the annual or interim report. The same applies on clarifo.com, in the Data API and in Claude and ChatGPT through our MCP app.

• Structured figures carry the form type, accession number and period end date of the filing they came from.
• Text passages carry the section and page, and a link that opens the page with the passage highlighted.
• Derived figures, such as a US fourth quarter computed from the annual report, are labelled with the formula used.
• Figures we cannot source are left out rather than estimated.

Our overview of AI equity research tools covers what to expect from the category, and our article on equity research data platforms covers the data layer underneath.

When the cited page and the answer disagree

If a figure does not match the page, work through the checklist in order rather than assuming the answer is invented. Look at the column header first, then the label, then the unit. If all three match and the number still differs, ask the tool to quote the exact row it used. When the answer cannot point to a row on a page, leave the figure out of your work until you find it in the filing yourself.