AI in Project Finance Modelling: ChatGPT, Claude & Excel

AI has rewritten how financial models get built. This course teaches you to use ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot and Gemini as working tools inside a real financial modelling workflow in Excel - from your first AI-written formula to a complete, lender-ready project finance model, with the judgment to know when AI output can be trusted.

I'm a CFA charterholder with 15 years of M&A, project finance and financial modelling experience, primarily in offshore wind and renewable energy. I'm M&A and Structured Finance Lead at Ørsted, and previously worked at EY. This course is built from the workflow I use on live deals, not a generic AI tutorial with finance examples bolted on.

AI fundamentals for finance. You'll start with how large language models actually work, how to write prompts that produce usable financial outputs, and, critically, where AI gets it wrong. You'll see real examples of AI hallucinations, invented formula syntax and fabricated data in a modelling context, plus how to protect confidential deal data when using free-tier AI tools.

Excel formulas, LAMBDA and VBA with AI. You'll put AI to work on the mechanics of Excel: generating and debugging simple and deeply nested formulas (INDEX-MATCH, SUMPRODUCT, multi-condition IFs), building modern LET and dynamic array formulas, and creating your own reusable LAMBDA function library. You'll also use AI to write and troubleshoot VBA: formatting macros, scenario switchers and automation that used to take hours to code by hand.

A complete project finance model, built with AI. The core of the course (almost four hours) is a full project finance model built from scratch with AI assisting at every stage: model specification and cover sheet, assumptions, scenario switching, timing, revenue, construction and operating costs, working capital, debt sizing with sculpted repayments to a target DSCR, a VBA circularity solver, depreciation and tax, reserve accounts, the distribution waterfall, full financial statements with a balance check, lender and investor ratios (DSCR, LLCR, PLCR, project and equity IRR), and a dashboard with an integrated error-check system. Every AI-generated formula and macro is reviewed, explained and verified the way it would be in a real deal team.

Model review and audit. The course closes with using AI to check formula consistency, stress-test assumptions, challenge your scenarios, and generate documentation and audit trails, while being clear-eyed about what AI still can't do. It doesn't replace the modeller's judgment; it removes the friction around it.

By the end you'll have a repeatable AI-assisted modelling workflow, a working project finance model built with it, and the judgment to know when to trust AI output and when to override it.

This is not a beginner Excel course. It's for analysts and finance professionals who already build models, and for anyone who has taken a traditional Excel or financial modeling course and wants to see how AI changes the workflow end to end.