Goldman Sachs has initiated a collaboration with the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic to develop AI agents that will automate a rising number of roles within the bank, as revealed exclusively to CNBC by the firm's tech chief.
Over the past six months, Goldman has been working closely with embedded engineers from Anthropic to co-develop autonomous agents targeting two key areas: accounting for trades and transactions, and client vetting and onboarding, according to Marco Argenti, Goldman's Chief Information Officer.
The firm is currently in the "early stages" of creating agents based on Anthropic's Claude model, which are expected to significantly reduce the time required for these essential tasks, Argenti noted. Although he anticipates launching the agents "soon," he did not specify an exact release date.
"Think of it as a digital co-worker for many professions within the firm that are scaled, complex, and very process-intensive," Argenti explained.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon announced in October that the bank is embarking on a multiyear strategy to restructure its operations around generative AI, a technology that gained significant attention following the introduction of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022. Despite experiencing increased revenue from trading and advisory activities, the bank intends to "constrain headcount growth" as part of the revamp, Solomon stated.
The new developments at Goldman come amid updates from Anthropic – co-founded by a former OpenAI executive – which have triggered a sharp sell-off among software companies and their credit providers as investors assess potential winners and losers in the AI sector.