Cube's AI Analyst is available directly inside the Cube sidebar in Excel and Google Sheets. Ask questions about your financial data in plain English, get detailed narrative answers, and add AI-generated results to your spreadsheet as live Cube ranges.
AI Analyst works the same way across all Cube surfaces. If you've used it in Slack or Teams or the Cube Workspace, you'll find the same capabilities here, with additional options for working with results directly in your spreadsheet.
Cube's AI Analyst leverages AI to extract key data points from your analyses and generate a summary based on the extracted information. AI can make mistakes. You should review any generated content before use. Learn more about AI at Cube.
Overview
With AI Analyst in your spreadsheet apps, you can:
- Ask questions about forecasts, budgets, variances, and trends in plain English
- Get narrative analysis with department breakdowns, key trends, and bottom-line summaries
- Drill into transaction-level detail, down to individual line items from your source systems
- Add AI-generated data to your current sheet, a new sheet, or open it as a report in the Cube Workspace
- Continue prior conversations using saved chat history
AI Analyst respects your user-level data permissions and security roles. You can only access data you have permission to see in Cube.
Open AI Analyst
There are three ways to open AI Analyst from the Cube sidebar in Excel or Google Sheets:
From the Build section:
- Open the Cube sidebar in your spreadsheet.
- Navigate to the Build section.
- Click Build with AI.
From the Analyze section:
- Open the Cube sidebar in your spreadsheet.
- Navigate to the Analyze section.
- Click Let Cube Analyze for you.
From the toolbar:
- Click the AI Analyst quick-access button in the top toolbar of the Cube sidebar.
Any of these options opens the AI Analyst chat window in the sidebar.
Ask a question
Once the AI Analyst chat window is open:
- Type your question in the text field at the bottom of the chat window. You can ask questions like:
- "Break down travel expenses in 2025 and find the biggest cost drivers"
- "What's driving the variance in Q1 margins?"
- "How did revenue change compared to last forecast?"
- "Show me headcount costs by department for the last 12 months"
- Click the send button or press Enter.
- AI Analyst returns a narrative response that may include totals, rankings by dimension, key trends, budget context, and a bottom-line summary.
You can ask follow-up questions in the same session to drill deeper. For example, after reviewing a travel expense summary, you could ask "drill into the transaction details and find the highest contributing line items" to see individual transactions from your source systems.
Work with AI-generated results
After AI Analyst responds, a Cube Chat Message card appears below the response. Click the three-dot menu on the card to choose how to use the results:
Open Report: Opens the AI-generated data as a full, interactive report in the Cube Workspace. From there you can filter, drilldown, fetch, publish, and export.
Add to Sheet: Inserts the AI-generated data into your current spreadsheet tab. The data is added as live Cube ranges.
Add to New Sheet: Creates a new tab in your workbook and inserts the AI-generated data there. This keeps your existing work untouched.
AI-generated ranges are live Cube ranges
When you add AI-generated data to your spreadsheet using "Add to Sheet" or "Add to New Sheet," the results are inserted as standard Cube ranges. This means you can:
- Fetch updated data using the Fetch Data button
- Modify filters, columns, and rows in the Build panel
- Drill down into values
- Publish data back to Cube
- Re-select or edit the range like any range you build manually
View and manage chat history
AI Analyst saves your conversation history across sessions.
- Open AI Analyst from any entry point.
- Click the folder icon at the top of the chat window to open your history.
- Your prior sessions are listed with descriptive titles and the date of the last question.
- Click any session to reopen it and continue the conversation.
- Click the new chat icon at the top of the chat window to start a fresh session.
The chat window defaults to your most recent session when you open it.
Things to keep in mind
- AI Analyst is available in both Excel and Google Sheets. The experience is the same in both apps.
- AI Analyst can access both Cube data and transaction-level detail from your source systems.
- Responses are generated based on your current Cube connection and the reporting currency.
- All data access follows your Cube user permissions.
- You can ask about forecasts, headcount, model changes, and more.
- If you want to exit the AI Analyst chat, click Exit AI Analyst at the bottom of the chat window to return to the standard Cube sidebar.