Goldman Sachs has been working with the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic to create AI agents to automate a growing number of roles within the bank, the firm's tech chief told CNBC exclusively.
The bank has, for the past six months, been working with embedded Anthropic engineers to co-develop autonomous agents in at least two specific areas: accounting for trades and transactions, and client vetting and onboarding, according to Marco Argenti, Goldman's chief information officer.
The firm is "in the early stages" of developing agents based on Anthropic's Claude model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take, Argenti said. He expects to launch the agents "soon," though he declined to provide a specific date.
"Think of it as a digital co-worker for many of the professions within the firm that are scaled, are complex and very process intensive," he said.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said in October that his bank was embarking on a multi-year plan to reorganize itself around generative AI, the technology that has made waves since the arrival of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022. Even as investment banks like Goldman are experiencing surging revenue from trading and advisory activities, the bank will seek to "constrain headcount growth" amid the overhaul, Solomon said.
The news from Goldman, a leading global investment bank, comes as model updates from Anthropic, co-founded by a former OpenAI executive, have sparked a sharp selloff among software firms and their credit providers as investors wager on who the winners and losers from the AI trade will be.