Goldman Sachs is deploying Anthropic's Claude AI model to automate critical accounting and compliance functions, marking one of Wall Street's most aggressive bets on autonomous AI agents yet. The bank has spent six months embedding Anthropic engineers to co-develop agents that will handle trade reconciliation and client onboarding—tasks that currently employ thousands of people. CIO Marco Argenti told CNBC the agents will launch "soon," collapsing timelines for processes that have long been bottlenecks in banking operations. It's a pivotal test of whether AI can crack regulated, high-stakes financial work.
Goldman Sachs just made its boldest AI play yet, and it's happening in the back office—not the trading floor. The Wall Street giant has been quietly co-developing autonomous AI agents with Anthropic for the past six months, targeting two mission-critical areas that have resisted automation for decades: trade accounting and client onboarding. CIO Marco Argenti revealed the partnership exclusively to CNBC, signaling that AI has crossed the threshold from experimental chatbots to handling regulated financial workflows.
The move carries immediate implications for both Goldman's workforce and the broader software industry. The bank currently employs thousands in compliance and accounting roles—functions that blend data processing, regulatory interpretation, and judgment calls. "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," Argenti told CNBC. While he called job loss projections "premature," he didn't rule out cutting third-party providers as the technology matures.
