• JPMorgan is scaling AI tools across various business lines.
• At its Investor Day, the bank's leaders shared how AI is changing workflows across its main businesses.
• JPMorgan's tech spending is $18 billion, focusing on AI, machine learning, and cloud.

When JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum recently took some time to experiment with "vibe coding," he was amazed.

Computer scientists at the firm told him that using plain-language prompts to generate code with AI — known as vibe coding — has improved their efficiency, too. Barnum told investors and analysts at JPMorgan's 2025 Investor Day on Monday. "We have high hopes for the efficiency gains we might get," he added.

Barnum's remarks on how artificial intelligence is reengineering workflows were far from the only mention of how technology is reshaping America's largest bank. From fraud detection and call center automation to portfolio management and wealth advice, AI is no longer something the bank is just experimenting with through pilot projects; it's now scaling its tools and seeing measurable results.

The first step in adopting AI technology across the firm was rolling out its proprietary, in-house generative AI platform to over 200,000 employees. It has about 100 genAI tools in the pipeline, too, according to Barnum's presentation.

"Certain key subsets of the users tell us they are gaining several hours a week of productivity, and almost by definition, the time savings is coming from less valuable tasks," Barnum said.

The firm's spending outlook for technology is $18 billion, up by $1 billion year over year — the highest among Wall Street banks. As AI, machine learning, and cloud innovation lower the barrier to new features and tools, speed is critical to staying competitive, Barnum said. It's also a way to keep costs down going forward, especially on the hiring front.

"We were early movers in AI," the CFO said. "But we're still in the early stages of the journey."

Here's how that journey is taking shape—business line by business line.

Consumer & Community Banking

Before turning it over to Marianne Lake, CEO of JPMorgan's consumer and community bank, Barnum talked about how AI was being used by the unit's call centers, helping agents service customers more efficiently by anticipating customers' needs or quickly responding to questions.

Lake, the next speaker of the day, followed by saying that the bank reduced servicing costs by nearly 30% in part because of AI, but also because of "good old-fashioned" process automation and organizational efficiency.

"The operations team is at the tip of the spear on using and leveraging new AI tools and capabilities," she said.

She predicted a 10% head count reduction in operations with the help of AI, a division focused on fraud, statement, payment processing, and account services.

"I would take the over on this projection, and I'll bet we will deliver even more as the tools and capabilities just keep getting better and better."

The technology has also played a "very significant" part in reducing fraud, even as hackers and cyberattacks become more sophisticated.

The bank is now looking at ways to use technology to continue personalizing what people see when they open their mobile phone apps in hopes of better promoting relevant products and services. Personalizing for to people's interests and behaviors has helped increase engagement rates by 25% so far, she said.

Asset & Wealth Management

In wealth and asset management, AI is not just a tool, Mary Callahan Erdoes, the unit's CEO, told the audience. "It's reimagining workflows and it's changing the loading capacities for thousands of people on the front line and in the back," she said.

Portfolio managers and analysts at JPMorgan are using Smart Monitor, which the firm has estimated helps reduce time researching a topic by 83% by pulling in data from earnings calls, market moves, and filings, generating tailored alerts and analysis.

"I thought that you would be the last people to use this stuff because you think 'I'm too smart for AI, and I have to do it my way,'" she said, speaking to the investors in the room. "It saves so much time."

She said the tool that's caught the most attention is Connect Coach. The program, which prompts suggestions or recommendations to a wealth manager in real time, was rolled out to private bankers last year, Business Insider reported, and in the last week, it was launched to the banks' 7,600 wealth management advisors.

If a JPMorgan private banker hears from the bank's top researcher about European stocks in a meeting, the tool automatically pulls up who in the banker's client book does not have exposure, Erdoes explained. It'll bring up fund fact sheets, sample emails, or talking points to call clients with.

Advisory productivity is up 3.4 times, thanks to the firm's investments in technology, she said.

Commercial & Investment Bank

AI is being deployed across the workflow in JPMorgan's investment bank, from onboarding new clients — where costs to verify clients are down 40% — to client insights and portfolio optimization, Doug Petno, co-CEO of the commercial and investment bank, said.

He added that the bank now has over 175 AI use cases in production, focusing on predictive analytics and operational efficiency, including helping its bankers with risk—based decision-making.

In its payments business, the firm has used AI and machine learning models to reduce friction in payment transactions. Umar Farooq, cohead of JPMorgan's payments business, said that in the past few years, transaction volumes have gone up by more than 50%. Part of that is down to AI models cutting down on transactions that require human intervention to be resolved, often caused by things like account number mismatches or failed fraud detection checks.

"This is just a small example of how our dataset will be to the future of our business as we expand and lean ever more so into technologies like Generative AI," Umar Farooq, cohead of JPMorgan Payments, said.

• Investors like David Einhorn and Rob Citrone highlighted international stocks at Sohn on Wednesday.
• There has been a renewed interest from hedge funds to invest abroad and hedge exposure to the US.
• Bridgewater exec Karen Karniol-Tambour is telling investors to "treat diversification seriously."

Despite all the market turmoil of the first stretch of President Donald Trump's second term, US investors have ended up more or less where they started the year.

But there are lasting effects of the administration's tariff policies, such as a renewed vigor from asset managers to look outside the world's largest stock market for investment opportunities.

At the Sohn Investment Conference in Manhattan's Lincoln Center on Wednesday, big-name investors like billionaire David Einhorn and Tiger Cub Rob Citrone talked up a German chemical company and Mexican telecom stock, respectively.

Bridgewater's co-chief investment officer, Karen Karniol-Tambour, who spoke with Citrone on Wednesday, said that for the last few decades, the S&P 500 was "the best you could have done."

"But where that leaves us is that today it's hard not to feel that we're fundamentally in a different place than that," she said.

The main thing she is relaying to investors is "treat diversification seriously," echoing comments that she made at the recent Milken conference in Beverly Hills, where she said that allocators should "have some of your assets in Asia or even China, if you can."

Einhorn started his presentation on Wednesday with a critical joke about Trump's tariffs — implying that the US is shooting itself in the foot — though his firm, Greenlight Capital, profited off the first quarter's market turbulence with large positions in gold. He's a believer in the fundamentals of Bayer spinoff Lanxess, saying, "We think we have a butterfly," even though the market sees it as "a moth."

Einhorn said the company, which develops and sells a range of chemicals, including consumer protection products like disinfectants, could benefit from tariffs as it has production sites in the US and is a Chinese competitor.

Citrone, meanwhile, named América Móvil, the telecom giant founded by Mexico's richest man, Carlos Slim, as his favorite stock because of its exposure to many countries in Latin America. "We trust Carlos — so that's an amazing stock," he said.

Citrone, who made 52% in 2024, said that opportunities are ripe in Latin America, which investors have "left for dead for the last 25 years." Beyond equities, he also likes rates and currencies in the region. He said his fund has 75% of its risk outside the US, with a certain amount in emerging markets.

Karnoil-Tambour said that, of course, money won't leave US capital markets overnight, especially as it remains the deepest equities market for investors.

Citrone drove home how undercapitalized other markets are, saying that when Nvidia's stock fell after investors' discovery of DeepSeek in January, "it was like two Mexicos."

• Larry Fink says he's ready to step down as BlackRock CEO but the team isn't ready yet.
• Fink, 72, cofounded BlackRock and has led the $11.5 trillion asset manager since its inception.
• Fink criticized conditions in New York City, urging leaders to "restore its former glory."

Larry Fink is looking forward to the day he's no longer the CEO of BlackRock, but that's not happening just yet.

Fink, the 72-year-old cofounder and the only CEO BlackRock has ever had, has long been answering questions about who will succeed him and Rob Kapito, the firm's president, at the $11.5 trillion asset management behemoth.

"I look forward to the day when I'm not running it. I do not want to be somebody that's staying on longer than needed," Fink told the Economic Club of New York. The next generation team is in place, he said, but "they're not ready yet."

He said that the firm's scale makes "the job harder" and that he "fundamentally believes" the team immediately below him and Kapito will take over in the future.

The group of executives likely to succeed Fink includes Rob Goldstein, the firm's chief operating officer; Martin Small, the chief financial officer and global head of corporate strategy; Rachel Lord, the head of international; and Stephen Cohen, who was promoted to chief product officer last year.

This lineup saw a shake-up earlier this year following the surprise exit of Mark Weidman, who, along with Goldstein, had been seen as a top contender to replace Fink. Weidman joined the Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial as its president on Monday. Salim Ramji, another executive considered a prospective successor, left BlackRock last January and joined Vanguard as its chief executive in July.

Fink said he was proud of the BlackRock "diaspora," which has seen firm leaders take up CEO posts at other asset managers.

Despite once opposing staying on as chairman — he said it would be a disaster in a 2017 interview — Fink said he's now open to staying close to help but likely not for long.

Fink also touched on conditions in New York City, saying he used to believe working and living in the city was an honor and that his taxes were being put to good use, but because of crime, filth, and the declining quality of services, he said he "doesn't feel that way anymore."

"You know, you're seeing more and more of your firm's population are asking, 'Can I move to other places?' because they're worried about the cost of housing here, the crime, the cost of education, all the things that are that are facing us."

He said that BlackRock's New York employee base, with the exception of the acquisitions group, has remained at around 4,000 over the past seven years.

He wants business leaders to "reclaim the glory of New York City."

While he didn't name a mayoral candidate he was looking to back in the coming November election, Fink said he was a fan of Ritchie Torres, a congressman representing the Bronx who's expressed interest in a gubernatorial run.

"He's not running for mayor, but he is one of the key members of Congress representing the Bronx who is really trying to make a difference," Fink said.

• Larry Fink said most of the CEOs he talks to think that the US is in a recession.
• He said the market could decline another 20%.
• In the long run, however, this is more of a buying opportunity, he added.

The CEO of the world's largest asset manager was asked whether he thinks a recession is coming. Larry Fink's response: We're in it.

Most CEOs the BlackRock chief has been talking to "would say we are probably in a recession right now," he said Monday in an interview at the Economic Club of New York.

"One CEO specifically said the airline industry is a proverbial bird in a coal mine — canary in the coal mine — and I was told that the canary is sick already," he said, adding that travel demand had declined.

Last week, President Donald Trump made a tariff announcement that prompted trillions of dollars in value to be wiped from the stock market. He has made no indication that he will reverse his plans despite investors' pain.

Fink raised concerns about inflation if all the proposed tariffs were put into effect simultaneously. He said this would make it difficult for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, adding that there was "zero chance" of multiple rate cuts.

"I'm much more worried that elevated inflation — that's going to bring rates up," he said.

While Fink said he believed the markets could still fall by another 20%, he suggested that the conditions were "more of a buying opportunity than a selling opportunity" in the long run as there are no systemic risks in the financial system.

Longer term, Fink thinks Trump will focus on a growth agenda, like deregulation and tax cuts, he said: "The market is not focusing on these areas."

Fink said the need to build up infrastructure in the US, especially for AI, is still a major investment theme that needs to play out.

"If you spent time right now with the CEOs of the hyperscalers, Nvidia, and other players, they would say the need is just as great today as it was three months ago, and I believe some of the big macro trends are still in place," he said.

• Dipendra Malhotra is joining Citi as its head of wealth technology, Business Insider has learned.
• Malhotra spent 11 years at Morgan Stanley leading AI and tech for its wealth business.
• Citi's wealth business has been dragged down by its poor tech and operating platform.

Citi's wealth boss, Andy Sieg, is bringing in a Morgan Stanley technology leader to strengthen the bank's offering in the ultra-competitive race to manage wealth clients' money.

The bank has hired Dipendra Malhotra as head of wealth technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Malhotra is joining Citi in late-May after 11 years at its rival, Morgan Stanley, where he led the bank's AI, machine learning, analytics, and data for its wealth management business.

Improving technology and digital offerings within Citi's wealth management unit has been a top priority for Sieg, who Citi CEO Jane Fraser tapped in 2023 to turn the wealth unit around. Citibank has struggled with its tech over the years, a problem that has extended to its wealth business. An internal audit conducted by Ernst & Young estimated that it would cost the bank at least $500 million to fix its patchwork of tech systems, Business Insider reported last year.

Still, it's an area where Sieg is hoping to gain some ground.

Citi's technology and operating platform "has been a limiting factor in this business," Sieg said at the BofA Securities Financial Services Conference in February. He has confidence that Fraser's transformation initiative, and its focus on data quality, is fortuitous for his business, adding that "we're setting the stage for us to be able to compete in a very different way to put work" for both clients and advisors.

While at Morgan Stanley, Malhotra was responsible for developing and maintaining data, AI, and machine learning tech for its wealth business. Morgan Stanley made headlines as one of the first Wall Street firms to partner with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, which has afforded its financial advisors with generative AI tools to help lessen drudge work.

When Malhotra joins Citi in a few months, he'll report directly to its chief information officer, Jonathan Lofthouse. Lofthouse became the bank's CIO when he absorbed the co-CIO position held by Shadman Zafar until he departed the bank in February.

At Citi, Malhotra is tasked with spearheading the modernization of its wealth technology, according to an internal memo from Lofthouse, seen by BI. He'll be working closely with two relatively new faces at Citi, Eric Lordi, a former JPMorgan executive, who heads up the wealth platform and experience and joined in January, and Joe Bonanno, who was named Citi's head of data, analytics, and innovation in July.

"Technology is the backbone of our ability to serve clients today and in the future, especially in an industry that is evolving at an unprecedented pace," Lofthouse said in the memo about Malhotra. "To make sure we are providing the absolute best wealth experiences for our clients, our technology must be nothing short of industry-leading,"

• Once ChatGPT hit the scene at the end of 2022, Wall Street ramped up its efforts in AI.
• Business Insider has reported on how some of finance's biggest names are approaching the new tech.
• See how firms from Goldman Sachs to Bridgewater are using it. 

Welcome to Wall Street's AI era.

Banks, hedge funds, asset managers, and private equity firms have been eager to use generative AI to boost productivity and reduce grunt work for workers. Since OpenAI's introduction of ChatGPT, finance firms have moved from pockets of experimentation to scaling these generative AI tools companywide. Such tech advancements have been met with a mix of enthusiasm and cynicism.

Business Insider has been reporting on how some of finance's biggest players are approaching artificial intelligence, from how it might impact jobs and create new ones, to the different ways firms are cutting costs and ramping up efficiencies.

Here is what we know about how Wall Street is embracing AI:

Banks accelerated their AI research and use cases due to the rise of ChatGPT

We identified 17 of the top AI executives and technologists to know at the country's biggest banks.

• How the 6 biggest US banks are thinking about AI and the 17 executives leading the strategy

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a "tremendous" user of the bank's generative AI suite. We have the story of how he and other execs use AI at the bank. Dimon also laid out his vision for how America's largest bank will win the AI battle against fintechs through data. Meet the leaders of that mission.

• JPMorgan's AI rollout: Jamie Dimon's a 'tremendous' user and it's caused some 'healthy competition' among teams
• Jamie Dimon says he's out to win the AI arms race. See who he's put in charge of this critical mission.
• JPMorgan is making a big bet on AI. Here's how its private bankers are using it.
• JPMorgan's Lori Beer just added 2 new tech leaders to her ranks. Meet the team behind the bank's AI future.

Goldman Sachs' chief information officer, Marco Argenti, and head of machine learning quants, Dimitris Tsementzis, say we are at an inflection point with AI. The technology is already changing how employees at the Wall Street giant does business. CEO David Solomon has said AI is changing processes like drafting IPO filings and analyst research. Seven Goldman employees from across the bank shared how they use AI on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Chief Data Officer Neema Raphael also outlined the bank's latest generative AI tool, taking aim at enterprise search.

• 7 Goldman Sachs insiders explain how the bank's new AI sidekick is helping them crush it at work

• AI is doing 95% of the work on an IPO prospectus, Goldman Sachs CEO says

• Wall Street's top tech priority: building internal search engines

• Inside Goldman Sachs' plans for AI, from helping non-tech workers do more with software to streamlining how code is documented
• Meet Neema Raphael, the data whiz key to Goldman's AI ambitions who's overseeing the bank's army of engineers and scientists
• Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti says Wall Street's 'next big wave' in AI will come down to culture, not just technology

Morgan Stanley, which partners with OpenAI, promoted wealth tech executive Jeff McMillan to become the bank's first head of firm-wide artificial intelligence in March. He explained how the wealth management arm has been using its new chatbot and hinted at what's next for the firm. McMillan has also outlined his strategy to turn employees' AI ideas into reality. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley's new innovation head told BI how he is looking to replicate the success of the bank's OpenAI partnership with more technology tie-ups.

• Morgan Stanley has more than 30 AI projects in the pipeline. Here's how the bank sources employees' ideas for inspiration.
• Morgan Stanley's new innovation head lays out his plan for more OpenAI-type partnerships
• Morgan Stanley is betting on AI to free up advisors' time to be 'more human.' Nearly 100% of advisor teams use it, and here's how.

At Citibank, generative AI is poised to change just about every employee's job. Citi's wealth business, for one, is about to welcome an AI leader from rival Morgan Stanley.

• Citi snags AI leader from Morgan Stanley to help turn around its wealth tech

• A top Citi tech exec breaks down the 4 phases of the bank's AI strategy that will impact everyone from operations to wealth and product

Deutsche Bank is aggressively experimenting with AI capabilities to transform the bank.

The bank is on a hiring spree, trying to more than double its AI employee base of around 300, but uncertainty around regulation, talent wars, and the cost of scaling the tech won't make it easy.

• Deutsche Bank wants to transform its business with generative AI. The German bank's tech chief lays out its strategy as it hires hundreds.

Generative AI could be one of the most promising tech advancements on Wall Street — it may also turn out to be one of the most threatening. Four in five bank leaders surveyed by Accenture in a recent study said they feel like they can't protect against hackers armed with AI.

• Wall Street is worried it can't keep up with AI-powered cybercriminals

Take a look at the patents filed by America's biggest banks over the years to see how they've been thinking about innovating through AI. Data from consultancy Evident revealed how banks are using the tech in everything from trading to UX.

• How Wall Street's biggest banks are actually looking at using AI, according to patent filings

AI is entering the deal room. Investment bankers at nine top firms predict that AI will trigger a wave of M&A and IPOs. Here are 11 bankers poised to lead the AI revolution for Wall Street. Some of those bankers predict the deals that could drive the "AI arms race" in 2025.

• The deals 4 tech bankers think the 'AI arms race' could drive in 2025

• Wall Street is gearing up for an AI shopping spree. Meet 11 bankers poised to come out on top.

Hedge funds have been on an AI hiring tear as firms look to solidify their teams and strategies

Top AI executives at hedge funds are tasked with setting their companies' AI agendas and ensuring that research and tech development progress is shared across the firm. These execs aren't always responsible for building the technology. For some, their role is influencing—or advocating for — its use among internal stakeholders, like portfolio managers, business leaders, and fund founders.

• How 9 hedge funds, including Millennium and AQR, are thinking about AI — and the 11 experts leading the charge

Point72's CTO Ilya Gaysinskiy knows that his boss, billionaire and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, likes to win. In his first interview since joining the hedge fund last September, Gaysinskiy told BI about his big plans to ramp up Point72's tech organization and how AI is going to play into that expansion.

• How Point72's CTO is building out Steve Cohen's tech ranks

Bridgewater launched a fund in July driven by AI. The fund's AIA Labs worked to replicate every stage of the investment process with machine learning. The firm's co-chief investment officer and chief scientist outlined the plans of the world's largest hedge fund.

• One of Bridgewater's top investors explains why the world's largest hedge fund is handing the investment process over to AI in a new fund

Balyasny Asset Management is in the midst of building the AI equivalent of a senior analyst. Charlie Flanagan, the head of applied AI at the $21 billion hedge fund, broke down his plan to amass a collection of bots to automate grunt work for analysts.

• How $21 billion Balyasny is building an AI equivalent of a senior analyst
• Balyasny wants to build an AI equivalent of a senior analyst. A recent breakthrough brings the hedge fund one step closer.

D.E. Shaw managing director Neil Katz gave BI an inside look at the quant hedge fund's generative AI approach, which is built on three main capabilities.

• D.E. Shaw's generative AI approach encourages programmers to build their own tools

Man Group, the largest publicly listed hedge fund with $161.2 billion in assets under management, launched a new data and machine learning group focused on generative AI in October. Tim Mace, who heads the department, outlined new capabilities his team is developing.

• The new AI head at Man Group, the largest publicly listed hedge fund, breaks down his plans to change how investors work

Interviews with 11 AI executives, recruiters, vendors, and consultants working on Wall Street revealed the cultural challenges hedge funds might face as they use their deep pockets to lure in AI talent. These leaders can struggle to gain the trust of business leaders and break into investment teams, and AI researchers have struggled with hedge funds' penchant for secrecy.

• Inside the rocky marriage of hedge funds and top AI talent

Private equity firms are trying to figure out how AI can boost their dealmaking and investment skills

Wall Street is no stranger to managing and analyzing copious amounts of data — but data is only helpful if you can find it. Here's an inside look at Blackstone's approach to enterprise search: DocAI, a generative AI tool that aims to help workers search and summarize more efficiently.

• Blackstone is looking to supercharge employee productivity with AI-powered search

Blackstone is also hoping AI will give it a leg up to capture more of the insurance company market. Here's how the firm is giving its insurance clients an edge with revved-up risk management capabilities.

• How Blackstone is using AI to win over big insurance companies hungry for private credit

Swedish PE giant EQT built an AI engine called Motherbrain that has changed how its investors source deals. ChatGPT enables the investing giant to take the next step with its AI ambitions.

• EQT is using ChatGPT 'to make cyborgs' out of its dealmakers. Here's how.

As private equity firms turn to AI for a competitive edge, Thomas H. Lee says its engineers are up to 30% more productive with help from AI coding assistants.

• The PE pig roast: How THL uses competitions to get its portfolio companies ahead on AI

Asset managers are also getting in on the AI action.

The multi-billion investment manager VanEck invested in a Toronto-based startup and is onboarding its technology to boost its ETF business. An exec and the fintech's CEO walked us through how AI will change analysts' and salespeople's jobs.

• Money manager VanEck is backing an under-the-radar AI fintech to boost its ETF business

Asset manager AllianceBernstein has been building a team focused on AI and data science since 2017.

Andrew Chin, AB's head of investment solutions and data science, talked to BI about how the asset manager uses AI to get an edge, save analysts hours of work, and improve risk management.

• How $704 billion money manager AllianceBernstein uses AI across everything from research to operations to save hundreds of thousands

Fintechs are developing AI tools to help their engineers work faster and smarter.

When the crypto exchange Kraken announced its plans to acquire a retail trading startup for $1.5 billion, the news made headlines. What went under the radar, however, was Kraken's use of generative AI for the due diligence process of its acquisition target. Here's how it went, and why the head of Kraken's M&A business now sees AI as a part of his core team.

• How Kraken used AI to fast-track a $1.5 billion deal

Block, billionaire Jack Dorsey's company behind Square, Afterpay, and Cash App, developed an AI agent that's an expert coder — it can even write code better and faster than some of the company's top engineers.

Here's a look inside the initiative and why Block decided to open-source it.

• Lead Block engineer said the fintech's new AI agent writes better code than him — and the fintech is open-sourcing it to competitors

In 2023, the neobank Chime built its own private version of ChatGPT to help its engineers launch new products and features faster and more cheaply. The fintech's CTO walked us through his playbook.

• Chime's top tech exec details how the fintech is building an AI chatbot to speed up how quickly it launches new products and features.

AI is shaking up the tech talent market on Wall Street, from creating new jobs to changing what it takes to be a coder.

The proliferation of AI in the finance industry's tech ranks — both as builders and users — is evolving the role of developers as it becomes increasingly common to delegate much of their coding work to machines. Five industry veterans, including from Goldman Sachs, Point72, and Morgan Stanley, offered advice on how software engineers can keep their edge.

• AI is reshaping Wall Street tech jobs. 5 executives share the skills engineers need to keep up.

Wall Streeters, say hello to your new coworker. AI agents are beginning to permeate the labor force as assistants who can help humans with everyday tasks. Here's how banks and startups want to give every employee their own personalized direct report.

• Autonomous AI agents are coming to banks

Banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms are switching into hiring gear thanks, in part, to a seemingly insatiable demand for AI. Five recruiters outline the most in-demand tech roles on Wall Street

• Here are the most in-demand tech roles on Wall Street and how much they pay, according to 5 top recruiters

AI is creating entirely new jobs on Wall Street. Here's one, which has some private equity firms shelling out pay packages of up to $2 million to drum up AI at portfolio companies.

• Private equity firms are 'clamoring' to hire AI executives with some offering pay packages of up to $2 million

For a broader view at salaries, BI collected salary data on 8 Wall Street banks for AI roles across all levels.

• What Wall Street banks pay tech talent, from the data scientist earning $275,000 to the $120,000 quant-modeling job

Data is king for hedge funds, and Wall Street's generative AI era offers new advantages. Here's how much the biggest proprietary trading firms and hedge funds are willing to pay for talent, according to government data.

• Prop-trading firms and hedge funds like Point72, Balyasny, and Bridgewater are turning to AI for higher returns. Here's what they pay AI workers.

Top tech execs from Citadel, Goldman Sachs, and AllianceBernstein open up about how AI is changing the role of the CTO on Wall Street.

• Why CTOs have the biggest job on Wall Street right now. Tech leaders from Goldman and Citadel open up about how the job is evolving in the age of AI.

Blackstone recently hired an AI exec from Walmart to apply the technology at its some 230 portfolio companies.

• From Walmart to Wall Street: Blackstone hires AI whiz to supercharge its portfolio companies

AI is redefining what it takes to be a software engineer on Wall Street. Top tech execs from Goldman Sachs and Citi open up about why they want their developers to have liberal arts degrees.

• What does Goldman Sachs want in a coder? For them to have studied philosophy.

Balyasny's Bridger program, designed for incoming sell-side analysts to learn coding and AI skills, highlights the evolving skills of an analyst in the age of AI.

• Behind Balyasny's training program that gives analysts a crash course in data science and AI

Business Insider spoke to five industry experts to get their take on how ChatGPT and its underlying tech could be applied to various sectors of financial services.

• ChatGPT could upend jobs across Wall Street. Here's how 6 areas of finance, from investment banking to wealth management, might be impacted.

AI could improve the lives of investment bankers by taking on some tedious tasks, but it can also make it harder to break into and alter the skills required for entry.

• How AI will change the job of the junior banker and raise the bar to entry

AI has opened up a whole new playing field for public cloud giants to compete for Wall Street's wallet share.

Generative AI has become a key part of Amazon Web Services's playbook for winning more of Wall Street. The head of the financial services market development walked us through how Amazon's cloud division is working with JPMorgan, Bridgewater, MUFG, and Rocket Mortgage.

• How AWS is helping financial giants like JPMorgan and Bridgwater with their AI ambitions

Quant hedge funds are beginning to rely on the latest AI chips, like Nvidia's popular GPUs, to test some of their most advanced models. Google Cloud is helping quantitative investment firms like Two Sigma and Hudson River Trading innovate around a shortage of sought-after Nvidia AI chips.

• A shortage of Nvidia AI chips is hindering hedge funds. Google Cloud is giving quants like Two Sigma a way around.
• Quant market maker Hudson River moves to Google Cloud to supercharge the algorithms that power millions of trades

Startups are looking to capitalize on Wall Street's AI fever

Auquan only launched less than two years ago, but it's already been signed by some big financial firms. Here's a look at how its technology is automating research work usually done by analysts.

• This startup is bringing AI agents to banks and money managers including UBS, Blue Owl Capital, and T. Rowe Price. Here's the deck is used to raise $8 million.

This startup wants to transform how investors and traders analyze data with generative AI. And it's catching the attention, and dollars, of some of the biggest names in the hedge fund world, like Millennium Management's founder Izzy Englander and billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller.

• This startup for traders just raised $30 million from investors including Stanley Druckenmiller and Greg Coffey. Here's how it plans to transform how Wall Street analyzes data.

Meet Mako AI, a generative AI bot designed to solve the woes of early-career private equity associates. The startup, which launched in September, is cofounded by a former Bain and Co. consultant who worked in the PE industry and remembers the countless hours he spent on mundane tasks like collecting data, writing reports, and building formulas.

• This startup just launched the AI equivalent of a first-year private equity associate. Here's its pitch deck.

Wall Street firms know the pains of having to satisfy regulators, but advancements in AI are introducing a whole new level of scrutiny and complexity. Meet this startup, which automates some of the most time-intensive parts of the risk management process.

• Here's the pitch deck this AI risk management startup used to raise $8 million in a round led by Point72 Ventures

Louisa AI is a startup built to suggest potential deals for investment bankers and venture capital investors. The fintech, which was born inside Goldman Sachs by a former Goldman managing director, has suggested $800 million in deal values per quarter across a handful of clients.

• See the pitch deck that helped a former Goldman Sachs exec raise $5 million for an AI-powered networking startup that feeds deal ideas to bankers.

Wall Street has a reputation for a hard-charging work culture, something that every junior banker learns in their life. Gabe Stengel was one such banker, sometimes staying up until 5 a.m. to create earnings summaries or to pull together presentations for superiors while at Lazard. Stengel knew there had to be a better way.

• See the pitch deck that helped former investment bankers raise a $7 million seed round for their generative 'AI consigliere' to bankers and analysts

• Citi sustained an $81 trillion "inputting error" last year, though no money left the bank.
• This followed a series of operational blunders that have drawn regulatory scrutiny.
• In 2020, Citi accidentally transferred $900 million to Revlon creditors.

Citigroup's fat-finger blunders may not be over.

The Wall Street bank accidentally credited a client's account with $81 trillion instead of $280, the Financial Times reported on Friday. This followed the accidental transfer of $900 million in 2020 to Revlon creditors due to human error and outdated technology.

A Citi spokesperson did not confirm the figures involved to Business Insider but described the latest incident as an "inputting error" that highlighted improvements to the bank's operational controls because no money was transferred out of the bank.

"Despite the fact that a payment of this size could not actually have been executed, our detective controls promptly identified the inputting error between two Citi ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry, " the spokesperson said in a statement. "Our preventative controls would have also stopped any funds leaving the bank," the spokesperson said, adding that there was "no impact to the bank or our client."

The mishap came amid Citi CEO Jane Fraser's efforts to convince shareholders and regulators that she's turning the bank around. It points to Citi's struggle to iron out the kinks in its tech and compliance frameworks — the central goal of a sweeping, multiyear plan called the Transformation, which aims to help the bank prove to regulators that its risk controls have improved over the years.

This is the latest in a series of glitches for Citi, which has had to pay US regulators $400 million in fines over its data management and risk controls. In July, shortly after the $81 trillion mistake, Citi was hit with $135.6 million in fines for failing to make enough progress to satisfy the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

British regulators also fined Citi about $79 million in May for a 2022 incident in which a Citi employee accidentally added a zero to a trade, which caused a flash crash in Europe.

The blunders and fines add to the mounting pressure on Fraser, who inherited the bank's outdated systems and regulatory issues when she took over in March 2021. US Sen. Elizabeth Warren in October urged the OCC to place growth restrictions on Citi, saying the bank had become "too big to manage."

Fraser has dedicated billions of dollars to a firmwide initiative to overhaul the bank's technology. The bank has about 12,000 employees working on its Transformation project, which is overseen by the Citi consumer-bank veteran Anand Selva.

After the July fines, Fraser tapped Tim Ryan, the bank's head of tech, to lead the effort to improve its data controls alongside Selva.

Fraser has defended Citi's progress in earnings calls, reiterating that improving its systems is a yearslong process.

"We know what we need to do," she said on a fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts in January. "We've got our arms around all of this. We're just getting on with execution."

• BlackRock removed DEI mentions from its annual report amid political pressure.
• The asset manager has faced criticism from Republicans for being too "woke."
• Here's how BlackRock has tried to distance itself from the themes it once championed.

Many big American companies have been quick to respond to President Donald Trump's pushback on DEI, but none of their steps carry more symbolic weight than a retreat by BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager.

An early advocate of diversity, equity, and inclusion, BlackRock has removed all mention of the strategy from its latest annual report. The asset manager and its CEO, Larry Fink, have over the years become targets for Republicans who claim the firm is too "woke."

What was the DEI section in the asset manager's last report has now been reframed as "connectivity and inclusivity" in the Tuesday filing. Last year, it said that it believed "a diverse workforce with an inclusive and connected culture is a commercial imperative and indispensable to its success."

This year it avoided mentioning the acronym or a diverse workforce, just "diverse perspectives."

When reached for comment, a BlackRock spokesman referred to the new paragraph in its annual report that said the firm's approach to "building a connected and inclusive culture is aligned with the firm's business priorities and long-term objectives. Delivering for the firm's clients requires attracting the best people from across the world.

"BlackRock is committed to creating an environment that supports top talent and fosters diverse perspectives to avoid groupthink."

BlackRock has also removed references to a three-pillar strategy, which included phrasing around cultivating a work environment where employees felt "seen, heard, valued, and respected."

The firm left out a section that previously broke down its US employees by gender and ethnicity. In its 2023 annual review, it introduced the statistics with a line saying that "BlackRock views transparency and measurement as critical to its strategy."

Companies have been quick to respond to President Donald Trump's executive order on "radical and wasteful" DEI programs, though a few big names such as JPMorgan Chase and Costco have reaffirmed their commitment to diversity initiatives.

Through his annual investor letters, Fink promoted stakeholder capitalism and environmental, social, and governance investing, becoming the unofficial corporate poster child for the movements. In the last few years, however, Fink has had to tone down his support for ESG and defend against the idea that the firm has an ideological agenda it's forcing on the many companies it invests in through its mutual funds and ETFs.

The firm also has critics on the political left. Climate activists have previously protested outside Fink's home and BlackRock's New York headquarters, calling for a divestment from fossil fuels.

"The only agenda we have is delivering for our clients," he said in 2023 LinkedIn post, which he drafted as a response to being called the "king of the woke industrial complex" in a Republican Party presidential candidate debate.

Here is a timeline of how BlackRock built and then knocked down its reputation as a social and environmental champion:

• The biggest hedge funds are battling it out to attract and retain top talent and outperform peers.
• Business Insider has talked to elite hedge funds to get a peek into their recruiting processes.
• From internships to high-paying tech jobs, here's what we know about their hiring practices.

The war for hedge fund talent cuts across all levels and positions, with firms like Citadel, Point72, and Millennium constantly competing to gain an edge in a cutthroat industry.

These behemoth funds are now putting serious time and resources into recruiting for internship and training programs to create a steady employee pipeline. Steve Cohen's Point72 and Ken Griffin's Citadel recently opened applications for their 2026 summer internships to undergrad students.

Eye-popping pay, challenging work environments, and the promise of working with some of the best investors in the industry can make them an attractive employment option.

Internships at quant fund D.E. Shaw, for example, can pay up to $22,000. Salaries for entry-level analysts and software engineers are often in the six-figure range. Portfolio managers with winning strategies can take home millions.

Business Insider has talked to some of the biggest hedge-fund managers about how they attract talent, as well as their advice to prospective hires.

Here's everything we know about getting a job at a large hedge fund.

Internships

Years ago, the opaque and secretive world of hedge funds might not have been an obvious career choice for most college graduates. However, these investing behemoths are now investing in getting young, diverse wunderkinder, especially mathletes, familiar with their brands as soon as high school.

Internships are another talent pipeline for some of the biggest multi-strategy hedge funds, which employ armies of traders and engineers. Programs can be uber-competitive and harder to get into than many top Ivy League schools.

Citadel's summer internship program, for example, has become increasingly competitive. Last year, the hedge fund accepted around 300 interns to spend 11 weeks at Griffin's hedge fund or his market maker, working with stock-pickers, quants, engineers, and more. The firm told BI that there were more than 85,000 applicants for the programs, with an acceptance rate of roughly 0.5%.

• Here's how to land a spot at Citadel's summer internship
• Citadel's associate program is a separate internship that puts rising college seniors on track to land a full-time investing role at the $66 billion fund.
• Ken Griffin's advice to interns: Hustle during your 20s and be aggressive when asking for a promotion

We also spoke to Point72 and D.E. Shaw about what they looked for in interns and how to stand out for a potential job offer down the line.

• Here's what it takes to stand out as an intern at Steve Cohen's Point72 and land a job offer
• A D.E. Shaw internship could land a dream gig at the secretive hedge fund. Here's what it takes.

Analyst and investment training programs

In the past, hedge funds acquired investment talent from investment banks. Increasingly, however, the industry's top players are recruiting college students through intensive training programs that can lead to jobs straight out of college.

Creating a pipeline of portfolio managers has been an increasingly popular strategy for hedge funds locked in an increasingly expensive battle for top talent.

• How to get accepted into Point72's ultra-elite analyst training program, whose acceptance rate is less than 1%
• Inside Point72's PM incubator LaunchPoint, where Steve Cohen is known to grill up-and-comers who think they're ready for the big time
• Inside Balyasny's Anthem training program, where aspiring portfolio managers are handed hundreds of millions of dollars to prove they can cut it
• Behind the training programs at Balyasny, which is looking to get ahead in the war for investment talent

Tech jobs and training programs

Hedge funds have long been competing with the finance industry and top tech companies for top technologists. Engineers and algorithm developers are key to helping researchers, data scientists, and traders develop cutting-edge investment strategies and platforms. Quant shop D.E. Shaw also has a unique approach to finding talent.

• Inside Citadel's exclusive engineering program that's helped the hedge fund snap up talent from Google and Goldman Sachs
• Here's how to get a tech job at Millennium, from the programming language to know to the interview questions to prep for
• Millennium is on the hunt for engineers in Miami. A top tech exec for the $58 billion hedge fund details the firm's new training program.
• Inside Man Group's popular training program for non-tech employees that teaches them skills to automate tasks and reduce errors in their work

Other resources and advice

Here's a look at how some firms find and vet new employees, what skills and qualities they're looking for …

• Why quant giant D.E. Shaw seeks out academics, doctors, and veterans to work at the hedge fund
• Citadel portfolio manager explains how he rose in the ranks of the hedge fund and what he looks for in a new hire
• Inside the 5-hour psychological interview that can make or break your career at Citadel, Blackstone, and other finance titans

• Inside the spycraft hedge funds use to vet multimillion-dollar traders, which is edging into murky legal territory

  ... and a rundown of some of the gatekeepers to know:

• The rise of the hedge-fund talent whisperers
• The talent brokers of quant trading: The headhunters at the forefront of Wall Street's systematic-trading and data-science hiring frenzy
• Try our searchable database of more than 350 Wall Street headhunters to find your dream job in private equity, investment banking, or hedge funds

• Citigroup has announced changes in its technology and services divisions.
• CEO Jane Fraser is on a mission to simplify the bank's structure and focus on profitable business lines.
• Two key executives are leaving the bank amid the reshuffles.

Sprawling Citigroup is no stranger to reorganizations since its CEO Jane Fraser took the helm of the global bank in 2021.

Now, the firm has announced changes internally to two divisions key to its transformation: one in the technology unit that underpins the massive bank and another in its services business. The latter helps clients manage and move money globally and is what Fraser has labeled the bank's "crown jewel."

Fraser inherited a bank saddled with regulatory problems and outdated technology that lagged behind its other household-name peers. She has since divested in businesses, announced layoffs of several thousands of roles, and brought in several top executives to help revitalize areas like tech, wealth, and investment banking.

"You can see the very tangible progress we're making in executing the strategy that we laid out at our Investor Day three years ago," Fraser said in a call to analysts last week. "We have materially simplified our firm since then."

Citi's Tim Ryan, head of technology, and Shahmir Khaliq, head of services, sent memos to employees Monday announcing the changes that were seen by Business Insider. Here are the changes each executive laid out and why.

Technology reshuffle

Ryan is rethinking his leadership team to help the bank keep up with the rapid pace of technological changes and "position Citi as a top destination for engineering talent," he said in a memo to the bank's technology and business enablement employees on Monday.

The leadership shakeup will also result in moves across teams to better align with the firm's mission, which Ryan said will be communicated shortly.

"I know that the organization has been through a lot over the last 18 months," Ryan said. "I need you to know that I am making these changes to help secure Citi's future and in doing so, create opportunities. This is the big picture that I ask that we keep at the forefront of our minds."

Ryan said he had taken stock of the tech team's weaknesses and strengths since joining from the top US job at accounting firm PwC last June.

The leadership changes also come after news last Thursday that Shadman Zafar, the bank's co-chief information officer, would be departing the bank, which was earlier reported by Barron's.

Jonathan Lofthouse is now the sole chief information officer, according to the memo. His team will be responsible for all business technology and be "relentlessly focused" on accelerating the modernization and simplification of the bank's technology stack.

Other changes to the lineup include:

• Al Tarasiuk, chief information security officer, will become the head of foundational services taking on oversight of technology infrastructure in addition to security.
• Julien Courbe is joining Citi from PwC as head of functions and enterprise change. His team will be responsible for functions, risk, and finance technology.
• David Griffiths has been named chief technology officer, head of emerging technology and strategic partnerships. He will work across the organization to deliver and integrate the firm's tech tools. "He will leverage the unparalleled access we have to the world's best technology to ensure Citi is first to the future," said Ryan. Griffiths was previously head of engineering and architecture,
• Ann Barron-DiCamillo will take on a newly created role as head of technology optimization and risk reduction. She will focus on "optimizing" Citi's software to make it consistent and simplified across the business. She was previously the global head of cyber operations.

Services shuffle

Last summer, Citi dedicated an entire investor day to talk about one of its oldest businesses: Citi Services.

The business is being reorganized and a 35-year Citi veteran and a key leader within the unit is leaving. Citi Services, one of the bank's 5 main business lines, is core to Fraser's turnaround strategy as it is seen as a unique business that can be tapped for further revenue growth.

Okan Pekin, global head of securities services, has decided to leave the bank and pursue new opportunities, according to a memo to employees from Khaliq. Okan will stay at Citi through the end of March as a member of the services management team.

His unit, which works with investment managers and companies issuing debt and equity securities, will now become two business lines—Issuer Services and Investor Service. Investor Services will include custody, fund services, and execution services, Khaliq said in a separate memo. The firm is searching for a new head of investor services.

Pekin has led Citi's services for asset managers since 2013. Under his leadership, he restructured the business, won several client mandates, and built out Citi's ETF business.

He joined the firm in 1989. During his time at Citi, he also led sales in Citi's markets division for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and helped Citi become a leader in the foreign exchange business.

Citi Services' business lines also include payments, liquidity management services, and trade and working capital solutions.

Artie Ambrose, Citi's current treasury and trade solutions head of operations, will take on an expanded role as Services head of operations.

Khaliq said the division's structure "will continue to evolve" and the bank would share more once it appoints a replacement for Pekin.

"I'm confident that these changes will drive continued momentum for us as a business and will also unlock greater mobility opportunities for our talent across our various businesses," he said.

• Mark Wiedman, a top BlackRock executive, is leaving the asset-management firm.
• Wiedman was seen as a prospective successor to CEO Larry Fink.
• He's leaving to pursue opportunities outside the firm, a source said.

A top BlackRock executive, Mark Wiedman, who was considered a prospective successor to CEO Larry Fink, is leaving the world's largest asset manager, a person familiar with the matter said.

Wiedman, who most recently led BlackRock's global client business, was one of two senior executives that insiders at the $11.5 trillion firm considered most likely to replace Fink, Business Insider previously reported.

Wiedman, 54, has chosen to pursue opportunities outside the firm and plans to stay on through the spring, the person familiar with the matter said.

A veteran of BlackRock who has been with the firm for two decades, Wiedman joined from the US Treasury Department and rose up the ranks. He was responsible for the integration and growth of its exchange-traded-fund business, iShares, and helped establish FMA, the firm's influential consulting arm. The Financial Times earlier reported his planned departure.

Fink, who turned 72 in November, had a blockbuster 2024, announcing three big acquisitions in hopes of bringing BlackRock closer to dominating the world of private markets. In December, BlackRock said it was set to buy HPS Investment Partners, a private-credit behemoth managing $148 billion.

Fink, who cofounded BlackRock in 1988, has been more vocal over the past year about the firm's growth plans than about whom he plans to pass the business on to. But he previously said that he had "no higher pri­or­ity" than put­ting together a team to replace him­ and Rob Kapito, Black­Rock's pres­id­ent.

The news of Wiedman's exit comes a day before BlackRock is set to report its fourth-quarter earnings.

Rob Goldstein, the firm's chief operating officer, along with Wiedman, has been named as a prospective successor to Fink. Other names in the mix have included Martin Small, the chief financial officer and global head of corporate strategy, Rachel Lord, the head of international, and Stephen Cohen, who was promoted to chief product officer last year.

Last January, Salim Ramji, another executive considered a prospective successor, left and joined Vanguard as its chief executive in July.

Wiedman's exit will likely be seen internally as a surprise.

Rebecca Ungarino reported for BI in January 2024 that it had "always been Weidman" at the front of the race.

A person familiar with the matter told her: "Now, it's hard to predict when a transition may happen. The senior-most officers of the firm thought the transition would have taken place awhile ago. Larry is definitely taking his sweet time."

• Two Sigma's billionaire cofounders, John Overdeck and David Siegel, are heading to arbitration.
• The pair stepped down from the $60 billion quant in August.
• Despite the cofounder drama, the firm's flagship returned 10.9% in 2024.

Two Sigma's billionaire founders are not done fighting, but luckily for investors, they're no longer at risk of being collateral damage.

The cofounders, John Overdeck and David Siegel, are heading to arbitration over their long-standing feud about how to manage the $60 billion asset manager that they started in 2001.

According to a Bloomberg report, the firm disclosed the arbitration in a letter to investors on Wednesday and said that it isn't party to the dispute. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.

Many hedge funds stumble when it comes to succession planning. For example, Bridgewater Associates went through several top executives over a decade before Ray Dalio finally let go of the reins. Investors in managers with aging founders push their funds to come up with succession plans, with varying degrees of success.

In the case of Two Sigma, the LPs are likely breathing a sigh of relief that the dispute between the two billionaires didn't complicate succession plans or stop the firm from humming along.

Two Sigma's investors enjoyed solid returns through 2024, as its flagship Spectrum fund gained 10.9%. The manager also made 14.3% in its Absolute Return Enhanced strategy, a person close to the New York-based quant giant told Business Insider.

The firm announced in August that Overdeck and Siegel would step down from their roles atop the firm to become the manager's co-chairmen. Carter Lyons, formerly the firm's chief business officer, and Scott Hoffman, former Lazard general counsel, took over as co-CEOs in September.

Siegel's and Overdeck's visions for Two Sigma decoupled in recent years to the point that the firm had to make a disclosure in a filing saying that its management committee "has been unable to reach agreement on a number of topics" — including succession.

While a leadership change affects every fund, quant platforms have proven themselves to be more capable of adapting. D.E. Shaw and Renaissance Technologies, two of Two Sigma's biggest competitors, have turned over their C-suite and continued to produce strong results.

The cofounders' decision to leave their day-to-day at the firm left LPs feeling optimistic.

"It's what we wanted to see," one Two Sigma investor told BI in August.

• Wall Street jobs pay well, but work-from-home opportunities tend to be slim.
• JPMorgan is considering whether to call all its employees back to the office full time.
• Check out the RTO policies at the biggest financial firms like JPMorgan, Blackstone, and Citadel. 

Every day it seems as if another company is calling its workers back to the office five days a week. Amazon's office staff are back to their seats Monday through Friday, starting this month, as are the employees of telecom giant AT&T. JPMorgan Chase is also considering returning to a five-day workweek, according to Bloomberg News. 

Investment banks like Goldman Sachs and hedge funds like Citadel have been at the forefront of efforts to get employees working in the same place since the pandemic kicked off the work-from-home phenomenon. Goldman's CEO David Solomon famously blasted the work-from-home phenomenon as an "aberration" before most Americans were even vaccinated. Citadel's Ken Griffin said he feared that work-from-home was harming the nation and wished President Joe Biden would do something about it. 

So, which Wall Street firms are still letting employees work from home at least part of the time?  Here is our list of back-to-work mandates at the largest financial services companies.

Goldman Sachs 

Goldman Sachs started calling workers back in June 2021 and was initially once of the few financial firms to buck to remote work trend and demand pretty much everyone return to the office five days a week. 

Goldman started by welcoming employees back with ice cream and food trucks to get there. By 2022, it was actively monitoring attendance via ID badge swipes. In 2023, it cracked down on laggards, reminding staffers that the 5-days-a-week policy is for everyone — even during the dog days of summer. 

JPMorgan 

JPMorgan started calling workers back in July 2021 on a rolling basis and by 2022, had developed a hybrid work policy that was supposed to result in just 50% of the bank's employees returning to the office five days a week, including people who work in bank branches or in investment-banking jobs like sales and trading.

By April 2022, Dimon said that 40% of the bank's employees, which then numbered about 270,000, would be permitted to work a few days at home, while about 10% could work from home full time. Everyone else was expected to be in the office five days a week.

The next April, Dimon called all of the bank's managing directors back to the office five days a week, whether they worked in demanding revenue-producing jobs or led back-office departments like technology and compliance. Everyone else must be in at least three days a week. 

Like Goldman, JPMorgan has also been tracking attendance through ID badge swipes, data that it collects into a dashboard that can churn out reports for managers and other senior leaders.    

A spokesman for JPMorgan, which reported having 316,043 workers at the end of September, declined to comment on Bloomberg's reporting that it may soon revert to a five-day-a-week schedule for everyone. He said that roughly 70% of the bank's employees were already back in the office five days a week, while everyone else was back three or four days a week.

Citigroup 

Citi's CEO Jane Fraser is one of the few Wall Street CEOs who has not participated in the work-from-home bashing. Instead, she's embraced a hybrid work policy that currently allows most employees to work three days from the office and two days at home, depending on the job. Bank branch employees, for example, are still required to go in five days a week. 

Fraser has also not shied away from reminding the troops that working from home is a privilege, not a right. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2023, she said that the bank was calling workers with productivity issues back to their desks. 

"We do measure productivity very carefully," she said, according to Bloomberg. "You can see how productive someone is or isn't, and if they're not being productive we bring them back to the office, or back to the site, and we give them the coaching they need until they bring the productivity back up again."

A spokeswoman for the bank said Citi is "committed to our hybrid work model. She said that the majority of employees still work on a hybrid schedule, or at least three days in the office and up to two days remotely.

Bank of America 

Bank of America's policy has morphed over time. In early 2022, it encouraged employees to work from the office more often but left room for flexibility at the manager's discretion. By May of that year, investment banking employees at all levels were being ordered to return to the office between four and five days a week.

Since 2022, Bank of America has required employees who are client-facing, like bankers and traders, to be in the office or meeting with clients five days a week. Everyone else must be in the office three days a week. A BofA spokesman confirmed that the policy established in 2022 remains in place.  

Early last year, the bank issued "letters of education" to employees who were in violation of the bank's return-to-office policies, BI reported. "Failure to follow the workplace excellence expectations applicable to your role within two weeks of the date of this notification may result in further disciplinary action," one of these letters said.

Morgan Stanley 

Morgan Stanley's new CEO Ted Pick has not commented publicly on the company's remote work policy since taking the role in January 2024. His predecessor, James Gorman, however, was a big proponent of working from the office, telling Bloomberg in 2023 that working from home is "not a choice." 

"They don't get to choose their compensation, they don't get to choose their promotion, they don't get to choose to stay home five days a week," Gorman said in an interview in Davos. 

That said, Morgan Stanley has allowed for some remote work, depending on the job. "At Morgan Stanley, we're kind of business unit by business unit. It's three or four days in the office," Gorman said at the time.

BlackRock

BlackRock's employees have been making use of its new Hudson Yards headquarters in New York City. 

The world's largest asset manager has required its employees to work in the office four days a week starting in September 2023, with the option to work from home one day a week, BI previously reported.   

Citadel 

Citadel's Griffin is a true believer that teams work better and faster when they're in the same room. His $66 billion hedge fund and his market maker, Citadel Securities,  have been full time in the office since June 2021.  

"We make so much money because our competition plays in their pajamas – and that's just been a home run for us," Griffin told Goldman partner Raj Mahajan in an interview for the bank's Talks at GS series in June 2023. 

Blackstone 

Blackstone employees have been back in the office five days a week since June 2021. 

To make its staff more comfortable with the initial return to office, Blackstone spent $20 million on Covid safety and specific precautions, a source told BI in 2021, including covering cab fares for employees' commute.

Bridgewater

Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, has kept to a flexible schedule. Since September 2021, the fund has required staff to be in the office a minimum of two days a week. 

 Managers and department heads, however, can require additional days in the office, according to the firm's website. On days employees are in, the firm focuses on taking "advantage of our shared location," it reads. Department heads and managers can require additional days onsite depending on the employee's role and business needs.

Millennium 

Izzy Englander's Millennium experimented with a hybrid working arrangement in 2021. At that time, the firm required its employees to work in the office at least three days a week.

Since then, most employees have been in the office 5 days a week, according to a person familiar with the firm. 

• Each year, Business Insider highlights Wall Street's rising stars.
• These are up-and-comers in investment banking, trading, and investing.
• All are 35 or younger. Check out our lists over the years.

For the past eight years, Business Insider's finance reporters have tapped their contacts to put together a list of who to watch on Wall Street.

We've received recommendations from bosses, colleagues, recruiters, and financial industry experts to create our annual feature. To be eligible, nominees must be based in the US, 35 or younger, and stand out among their peers. The editors make the final decisions.

Business Insider asked these rising stars from leading firms like Goldman, Blackstone, and Citadel to reflect on their successes, challenges, and best career advice.

2024

Meet our 2024 class

Our most recent set of young professionals reflect the future of finance. A number of them are shaping the trajectory of clean energy and artificial intelligence by financing the infrastructure that will underpin it. Some have seen their focus go from niche to hot asset. Others are influencing how Wall Street interacts with Main Street, using their skills and savvy to create new products and services for ordinary investors or giving employees at portfolio companies ownership stakes.

The rising stars also shared how they unwind and stay grounded in order to stay mentally sharp.

2023

Meet the 2023 class

2023's cohort included traders setting new playbooks for deals and trades and an investor building out burgeoning private markets businesses within the world's largest bank. These influencers also financed some of the biggest deals of the past few years and provided an edge to top investors with complex and innovative products.

They shared the lessons learned from their biggest career mistakes and how their Wall Street wardrobe had evolved from their COVID work-from-home days.

2022

Meet the class of 2022

As Wall Street navigated volatile markets, fewer deals, and plummeting company valuations, we found the players rising up despite the challenges.

One invested in space ventures, and another executed multibillion-dollar trades. Some up-and-comers pushed their teams to the top of industry rankings.

From books on the science of sleep to fantasy football strategy podcasts, here's what these bright leaders were reading and listening to. And here are some of their lessons and advice.

Here are the previous editions of our Wall Street rising stars list:

• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017

• Firms want more private market products to offer clients and are willing to buy instead of build.
• Private credit firms with $30 billion to $70 billion in assets will be the firms to watch.
• While deals make sense on paper, firms might have to deal with potential culture clashes.

The trend in asset management is pretty clear — private markets are the new black.

"If you're not in private markets or private credit, you'll need to move in that direction, or you'll get left behind," PwC financial services deal leader Greg McGahan told Business Insider.

Asset managers who have traditionally relied on ETFs and mutual funds to make money are itching to expand into alternative assets to diversify their offerings and boost fee revenue, a new PwC report said. That demand and expectations that interest rates will continue to drop and incoming light-touch regulators mean asset managers are ready to dust off their dealmaking playbooks.

Private credit firms specifically are in demand, as shown by the blockbuster BlackRock deal announced last week. The asset management giant agreed to buy the private credit firm HPS Investment Partners for $12 billion.

And it's not just the traditional money managers. Private equity firms are also using acquisitions to strengthen their private credit capabilities and market presence. PwC sees increasing competition in private credit contributing to the consolidation of alternative asset managers.

McGahan said private credit firms with between $30 billion and $70 billion in assets under management will be the ones to watch. They will either need to make a deal to grow bigger or be snapped up themselves.

"Those types of shops potentially could be absorbed into other shops that are looking to grow their portfolios," he said. "It's either acquire or be acquired."

Deals in alternatives will also be driven by aging founders in the private markets space who are trying to figure out succession planning and capitalizing on the ability to monetize their investments.

For his part, McGahan is seeing his deals practice's work ticking up and "getting up to full capacity. We'll be at supersaturation levels pretty shortly. So, I think you're seeing that pent-up demand now manifest itself."

Questions of culture

While the marriage of firms operating in one investing discipline with another makes sense for diversification reasons, the actual integration of the two could be trickier.

Culture and compensation are very different between traditional firms and alternatives. A portfolio manager at a publicly traded mutual fund might receive cash compensation and equity stakes. If you're a private equity manager, you're paid with carried interest, or a percentage of profits generated from the firm's investments.

"Could you have within a large traditional manager basically an alternative platform where the PMs are earning multiples of the existing PMs on the traditional side? That's going to be a cultural challenge,' McGahan said. He added there are also operational differences and gave the example of a private credit firm using treasury functions daily versus a private equity firm that uses a couple times a month.

The question of cultural fit is top of mind at BlackRock when the asset manager makes acquisitions, according to the firm's CFO Martin Small. BlackRock has made several high-profile acquisitions this year, snapping up Global Infrastructure Partners in January in addition to HPS.

Small, who was part of many meetings with HPS's executive team to test the waters, said the cofounders shared important values with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and firm president Rob Kapito.

"We all speak the same language," Small said at the Goldman Sachs Financial Conference in New York. "They're founders. Larry Fink and Rob Kapito are founders. We're client-centered firms. We believe in scale, we believe in global."

Integrating two firms successfully requires lots of important — if technical— work behind the scenes, Small added.

"People, platform, process — think about all the pedestrian things of the employee experience. You've got to be on the same email system, you've got to make sure people's laptops work, you've got to make their key cards work at the door, " he said. "All of that's done so we can just get to business on realizing the synergies and delivering for clients.

• BlackRock has agreed to buy private credit firm HPS Investment Partners.
• HPS is another major private markets deal for the $11.5 trillion money manager.
• BlackRock, known for its ETFs, is hoping a shift to private markets will drive growth.

Larry Fink is looking to close 2024 as he started it — by announcing a big acquisition that brings BlackRock closer to dominating private market investing.

BlackRock is set to buy HPS Investment Partners, a private credit behemoth managing $148 billion, in an all-stock deal worth around $12 billion, the firms announced Tuesday.

Fink, BlackRock's chief executive and cofounder, who built the world's largest asset manager with $11.5 trillion in assets by packaging public markets into cheap funds for the masses, has been very vocal about the firm's push into the profitable private markets.

This shift in strategy could lead to a more valuable BlackRock, which might just be enough for Fink, who turned 72 last month, to finally pass on the reins to his yet-to-be-named successor.

In January, the firm announced that it would buy private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners, with about $170 billion in assets, for about $12.5 billion in cash and stock. The deal, its biggest one since it bought Barclays's asset management business in 2009, closed in October. In June it agreed to buy data giant Preqin, which it hopes will help bring some of these more complex private strategies to a broader audience.

In addition to the HPS talks, the FT has reported that BlackRock is eyeing a stake in Izzy Englander's $70 billion hedge fund Millennium Management.

BlackRock is not new to reshaping itself through acquisition. The Barclays deal gave the firm iShares and helped it become the passive investing giant it now is.

"I do not want us to be comfortable in our business model," Fink said during the firm's investor day last summer. "I want to make sure we're questioning our business model and we are focusing on how to best serve our clients, and if we truly believe there is some great need that we need to do, we are going to reimagine who we are in our business model."

Acquiring HPS could be another "transformational" deal for the company, helping it reach the same scale it has public equities and bonds in private markets. HPS will push its alternative assets to more than $600 billion.

BlackRock's private credit business will now have a combined $220 billion in client assets. The deal is expected to increase private market fee-paying assets under management by 40% and management fees by 35%, BlackRock said.

Meet HPS Investment

HPS was founded by CEO Scott Kapnick, Goldman Sachs' former head of investment banking, along with Scot French and Michael Patterson in 2007 as a unit within JPMorgan called Highbridge Capital Management. Principals from the firm bought it out in 2016 after the bank's appetite for high-risk loans waned.

The three will now join BlackRock's global executive committee and lead a new unit combining HPS and BlackRock's existing private credit business.

The secretive firm has been at the forefront of the private credit boom, which resulted from the 2008 financial crisis and banks' withdrawal from risky lending. Private players moved in to make loans to companies when Wall Street giants were reluctant to.

"Our competitors refer to us as the nerds of private credit and we take no offense," French told Bloomberg in an interview last November.

The firm, which was previously working toward an initial public offering, caters to mostly institutional investors and has more than 760 employees in offices around the world, according to its website.

How it fits with BlackRock's ambitions

BlackRock brought in more assets in the third quarter than ever before, mostly down to its index funds, but in its October earnings call the firm's leaders were already focused on its future growth engine — GIP.

GIP is expected to add $250 million in management fees in the fourth quarter alone.

"This is a revenue growth story," Martin Small, BlackRock's chief financial officer said during that call." Private equity and credit investments are much more expensive than BlackRock's usual roster of funds and are in high demand from institutions like pensions and endowments as well as ultra-wealthy investors.

While BlackRock has long had an alternatives investing unit, until recently, its private markets assets were meaningfully smaller than those of the main players in the space, such as Apollo and KKR.

It's tried growing through acquisition in this space in the past. In 2018, BlackRock bought a small credit manager, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, which at that time had about $9 billion in committed client capital, but saw a number of investment professionals exit.

BlackRock expects the private debt market to more than double to $4.5 trillion by 2030.

While private credit's high yields and returns have increasingly attracted wealth managers and institutions alike, the deal will likely strengthen relationships with insurance firms, which have a longer investing horizon.

Ana Arsov, Moody's Ratings global head of private credit said the acquisition is "catapulting" BlackRock into the ranks of the top 5 private credit managers and significantly advances its private-market growth goals.

"Blackrock's large installed base of insurance client assets offers a prime opportunity to cross-sell HPS's capabilities, Arsov said. "Additionally, BlackRock's extensive distribution network of institutional investors and wealth managers opens new markets for HPS."

• Business Insider asked 27 venture-capital investors to nominate the most promising fintechs.
• Fintechs using AI to help Wall Street firms, bankers, and consumers lead this year's series.
• Here are 15 top AI-powered fintechs, according to VCs.

Fintech investors still see at least one bright spot in the industry, despite funding to the sector hitting one of its lowest points since the pandemic in 2024.

However, the dealmaking drought could ease up in the next year as a result of antitrust scrutiny softening and VCs might be more willing to open up their pocketbooks. One area that investors will likely hone in on is AI.

Business Insider asked dozens of VCs to identify the most promising fintechs to watch last fall. Nearly one-quarter of the startups they named are leveraging AI as a key part of their offering. Indeed, it is difficult to point to one area of finance where AI startups aren't threatening to change the way people bank, invest, save, and work.

Some of the startups on this list are business-facing, helping dealmakers negotiate debt agreements, streamlining tedious processes for junior bankers, or automating manual processes for accountants and CFOs. Others use AI to serve consumers, whether it's helping them figure out the best way to pay off debts or maintaining access to healthcare between jobs.

The startups named haven't raised beyond a Series C and include a mix of investors' portfolio companies and ones they have no financial interest in.

Here are 15 of the most promising AI fintechs to watch, according to top VCs.

BeatBread

Cited by: Deciens Capital (investor)

Total raised: More than $150 million

What it does: BeatBread uses AI to analyze and predict revenue potential for the music industry, providing funding advances to a broad range of artists.

Why it's on the list: "Artists of all sizes want independence and ownership over their music, to work with their preferred partners, and to control their own destinies. Historically, there hasn't been a real alternative to the major label advance for artists to get the capital they needed to scale their careers, which locks them into the label ecosystem," Dan Kimerling, the managing partner at Deciens Capital, said.

"2024 has been a pivotal year for BeatBread, marked by strategic moves and partnerships that further solidify its mission," Kimerling said, referring to its partnerships with the administrative publishing company Kobalt and its subsidiary AMRA to offer artists increased royalties and faster payments. Other strategic moves include a series of deals providing funding to independent labels to expand how BeatBread provides capital to artists.

Brico

Cited by: TTV Capital, Homebrew

Total funding: $8.1 million

What it does: Brico helps financial institutions and fintechs manage their licensing by using AI to automate applications and renewals.

Why it's on the list: "With Brico, businesses can effortlessly navigate the complexities of acquiring, renewing, and managing compliance for various financial licenses — including Credit, Money Transmitter, Mortgage Loan Originator, and more — in all 50 states," Lizzie Guynn, a partner at TTV Capital, said. "Brico makes regulatory compliance seamless and cost-effective with its user-friendly tools that reduce time and money spent on financial licenses."

"It's addressing a very manual and expensive process that nearly every financial services company needs to deal with on an annual basis," Satya Patel, a partner at Homebrew, said.

Cascading AI

Cited by: QED Investors, Vesey Ventures

Total raised: $4.1 million

What it does: Cascading AI, through its main product Casca, offers loan-origination software for the banking sector with an integrated AI assistant that allows firms to extend their hours.

Why it's on the list: "Customers do not operate on the 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday schedules that banks do," Laura Bock, a partner at QED Investors, said. "When a pizzeria's oven breaks, the owner is inquiring about a loan after closing shop. While today, it might take nearly three days to hear back from a loan officer after submitting an application, financial institutions using Casca's AI platform are able to unlock 24/7, 365 support for current and potential customers."

Dana Eli-Lorch, a founding partner at Vesey Ventures, said: "Their flagship product, an AI-powered loan assistant, enables manifold increases to banks' productivity and loan conversion rates, all while enhancing both accuracy and applicant experience. Casca exemplifies the powerful impact AI can have on financial services, driving significant operational efficiency and customer satisfaction."

Clerkie

Cited by: Flourish Ventures (investor)

Total raised: $41 million

What it does: Clerkie embeds its AI debt-automation software in financial institutions' mobile apps, allowing consumers to make financial decisions about their debts and discover solutions if they're struggling to pay them off.

Why it's on the list: "Clerkie's data flywheel and network create a win-win scenario for both consumers and financial institutions. Consumers enjoy a seamless experience within their banking app, with flexible solutions tailored to their specific cash flow needs, helping them avoid the collections process and protect their credit scores. Banks benefit from direct ROI through loan repayment while maintaining customer relationships," while also expanding loan-to-value ratios, Flourish Ventures' Emmalyn Shaw said.

She added that "Clerkie assumes no balance-sheet risk, serving as the debt-network and debt-payment infrastructure for financial institutions."

Comulate

Cited by: Pathlight Ventures (formerly Exponent Founders Capital)

Total raised: About $5 million

What it does: Comulate automates insurance statement processing, reconciliation, revenue recovery, and forecasting.

Why it's on the list: "Leveraging AI to drive real revenue lift for insurance carriers is driving success in a category" that's historically been hard to break into, Charley Ma, a cofounder and managing partner of Pathlight Ventures, said.

Coris

Cited by: Pathlight Ventures (investor)

Total raised: $3.7 million

What it does: Coris builds software for fintechs and other tech companies to manage risk and fraud among small- and medium-size business clients.

Why it's on the list: "Aggregating unstructured data on SMBs to generate insights at scale is challenging. Coris is at the forefront, leveraging a variety of methods across LLMs, ML, and good old-fashioned software to establish itself as the leading platform for managing SMB risk and fraud — already working with clients like Mindbody and ClassPass," Pathlight's Ma said.

Fintary

Cited by: Harlem Capital (investor)

Total raised: $2.5 million

What it does: Fintary helps insurance companies manage their finance and accounting needs by using AI to automate workflows.

Why it's on the list: "They have been invited to their customers' conferences in order to share the product with their customers' customers," Henri Pierre-Jacques, the cofounder and managing partner of Harlem Capital, said. He said Fintary has grown more than 10 times since Harlem's investment last fall, adding that "the quick ramp has been one of the fastest we've seen for a preseed company."

Greenlite

Cited by: Greylock (investor)

Total raised: $4.8 million

What it does: Greenlite automates compliance processes using AI for fintechs and banks.

Why it's on the list: "Greenlite has seen exceptional customer demands with enterprise banks and fintechs and has proven one of the few enterprise-grade applications for generative AI — automating tedious compliance workflows like alert handling, periodic reviews, and document processing, improving efficiency and reducing human error," Seth Rosenberg, a general partner at Greylock, said.

Iris Finance

Cited by: Redpoint Ventures

Total raised: $3.5 million

What it does: Iris Finance offers consumer-facing companies AI-powered financial planning and analysis software.

Why it's on the list: "While the notion of AI bookkeeping is very much in vogue today, replacing Quickbooks is hard — and not something most brands or outsourced accountants are looking to do in the near term," Redpoint's Clark said. "Iris, instead, complements Quickbooks with a more holistic AI-powered CFO-in-a-box for brands, enabling them to seamlessly track and improve day-to-day sales and margin performance across channels, which much more closely aligns with what founders want and how modern brands are managed."

Materia AI

Cited by: Bain Capital Ventures

Total raised: $6.3 million

What it does: Materia AI helps accountants organize their data, enabling them to automate parts of their work.

Why it's on the list: "With a decline in new auditors and an immense volume of manual data entry, professional-service audits are the perfect place for an AI copilot," Alysaa Co, principal at Bain Capital Ventures, said. "LLMs enable the automation of work like ingesting large sets of unstructured financial data, searchability, comparing against historicals and across the industry, and direct citations for where the data comes from."

Nilus

Cited by: Vesey Ventures (investor)

Total raised: $8.6 million

What it does: Nilus offers an AI-powered cash and treasury management platform for fintechs, financial firms, marketplaces, and other companies moving money.

Why it's on the list: Nilus "provides better data connectivity combined with AI to transform the CFO suite: a trend we are actively investing behind," Lindsay Fitzgerald, a general partner and the cofounder of Vesey Ventures, said.

"With Nilus, treasurers can skip the manual reconciliation work that previously took most of their day and focus on actions that can drive bottom-line impact. We think Nilus is poised to become the default software for modern treasury teams, displacing decades-old workflow tools like Kyriba and GTreasury," she said.

Noetica

Cited by: Avid Ventures, Index Ventures

Total raised: $7.85 million

What it does: Noetica helps deal professionals negotiate debit agreements with their data using an AI platform that benchmarks terms in corporate debt transactions.

Why it's on the list: "Noetica is a capital-markets data company for corporate debt, a market valued at trillions of dollars. Its AI-powered software allows professionals to upload any credit or bond document and compare all terms to similar public and private deals," Jahanvi Sardana, a partner at Index Ventures, said.

"Corporate debt terms are time-consuming and difficult to benchmark, leading deal professionals, such as lawyers and investment managers, to often miss higher-risk terms, as well as opportunities for negotiation. By building the largest proprietary dataset of corporate debt terms, Noetica is changing how these deals are negotiated and transacted," Tali Miller, a founding investor at Avid Ventures, said.

Novella

Cited by: Avid Ventures (investor)

Total raised: $2.5 million

What it does: Novella is an AI-powered insurance wholesaler specializing in excess and surplus insurance, which addresses higher-risk situations that standard carriers don't usually cover.

Why it's on the list: "Given the complexity of E&S insurance, it is sold through wholesalers who have relationships with specialty carriers, and retail brokers must work with these wholesalers to access these carriers. However, brokers have been frustrated by the leading wholesalers such as Ryan Specialty, Amwins, and CRC Group, whose lack of technology and system integrations lead to slow, inefficient, and opaque quoting processes," Avid Ventures' Miller said.

"The E&S market continues to grow," Miller said, adding that E&S direct premiums written in the US climbed to more than $86 billion in 2023, more than doubling since 2018.

"Using data and AI, Novella aims to reinvent this massive industry by making the information transfer between brokers and carriers fast and error-free and, ultimately, automating quote creation," she added.

Rogo

Cited by: Two Sigma Ventures

Total raised: $26 million

What it does: Rogo is building a generative AI assistant to help investment bankers and analysts do their jobs more efficiently.

Why it's on the list: "Rogo's platform is purpose-built for the complex data needs of the financial sector, allowing nontechnical users to query vast amounts of financial data using natural language processing. This is a game changer for institutions like banks, investment firms, and insurers," Frances Schwiep, a partner at Two Sigma Ventures, said.

"I see immense potential in Rogo's ability to give first-of-its-kind access to critical financial analytics, positioning them as a key player in transforming how financial institutions interact with their data to drive more informed decisions across the industry," she added.

See the pitch deck for Rogo's $7 million seed.

When

Cited by: TTV Capital (investor)

Total raised: $7 million

What it does: When uses an AI assistant to help exiting employees maintain access to healthcare by providing affordable alternatives to COBRA and making it easy to compare pricing and deductibles.

Why it's on the list: "There are more than 700,000 companies in the United States with 20-plus employees, which means they are required by law to offer COBRA. Last year's 721,677 planned job cuts brought some of the largest reductions in company head count that we've seen in the past two decades," TTV Capital's Guynn said.

"Offering an alternative to expensive, inflexible COBRA not only makes common sense but also economic sense. COBRA participants are three times more costly than active employees, which is especially burdensome for self-insured companies. To date, companies that offer When's fixed-dollar health-insurance premium reimbursement have seen an 80% conversion rate from COBRA. Employees that applied their When benefit to available plans have saved as much as 50% in out-of-pocket healthcare costs," Guynn said.

• Business Insider selected 25 young professionals, 35 and under, as its rising stars of Wall Street.
• We asked these up-and-comers what TV show, book, or movie best represents the finance industry.
• They shared some parallels and even pointed to works about nonfinancial subjects.

There's no shortage of colorful characters depicting Wall Street. There's the serial-killer investment banker, the corporate raider who declares that "greed is good," and the crooked, if charismatic, stockbroker, to name a few.

Two of those are fictional movie characters, and one was based on a real person, but they've all shaped the public's perception of what working on Wall Street could be like.

If you ask successful people at some of the biggest banks, asset managers, trading firms, or hedge funds whether they see their reality accurately perceived on the screen or in books, they'll tell you that working on Wall Street is a little less colorful than it's often painted to be.

"I don't know that there's a great movie or book depicting life on Wall Street," Mark Zhu, 34, a managing director at Blackstone, told Business Insider. "The day-to-day is a lot more boring than you think. It's a lot of calls and a lot of emails. There's not as much flamboyance or out-there behavior. It's almost not movie-worthy. Why would you pay money to watch somebody just sit in front of a computer doing Zooms?"

So maybe they think all that partying on HBO's show about twentysomething investment bankers, "Industry," is a little overdone, but there are still some elements the entertainment industry gets right occasionally.

We asked up-and-comers on Wall Street about the shows, movies, or books that best represent their daily lives. While no one representation was perfect, the young professionals talked about the parallels they saw. Some even shared some nonfinancial references that give a window into their world.

Here are the shows, movies, or books that give a flavor of what it's like to work on Wall Street.

Shows: "Industry"

The hit TV show "Industry" — full of sex, drugs, and spreadsheets — just wrapped up its third season.

"My friends in the last few years have nonstop bothered me about 'Industry,'" Justin Elliott, 29, a vice president of institutional rate sales at Bank of America, said.

"They see a crazy show about the industry and say, 'My God, I can't believe that happens in your world every day.' From what I've seen, there's definitely some thrills from getting a trade done that might mirror the show a bit, but it's a very exaggerated depiction of life on Wall Street."

"I don't know that any of them do a great job, but I am quite a fan of 'Industry,'" Erica Wilson, a vice president at the private credit firm Blue Owl, said. "I am still behind on the third season, but I think that show is fun."

"Succession"

Though the blockbuster show "Succession" isn't specifically about the banking industry, Daniela Cardona, a 29-year-old investment banker at RBC Capital Markets, watched it in its entirety and found some similarities in high-stress moments.

"In the last season, when they're trying to merge the two companies, there's one scene that always makes me giggle. I don't think this is fully accurate, but I do think it's funny — they're in a conference room, and Kendall says, 'Just make it up!' and they're all with their laptops sitting in the middle, and the consultants are looking at him like, what do you mean, make it up?" Cardona said.

"There have been instances where it sometimes feels that way — where you're in a time crunch and it's 3 o'clock in the morning."

"Scrubs"

Ben Carper, a 34-year-old managing director at Jefferies, pointed to the medical comedy sitcom "Scrubs" as a better representation than anything that features board rooms and trading floors.

He said the show had a "similar high-pressure environment where there are some opportunities for amusement and humor, but generally a pretty vigorous focus on doing a job well done."

Movies: "Margin Call"

The 2011 drama "Margin Call" follows the 24 hours after an analyst at an investment bank discovers it has taken on more debt than it can handle — illustrating the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis.

"I think it picks up the cadence of working at a big bank the best," said Austin Anton, 32, a principal at Apollo Global Management.

"The Wolf of Wall Street"

"The Wolf of Wall Street" follows the story of Jordan Belfort, who actually only worked at a Wall Street firm for a few months before the 1987 stock-market crash. He goes on to run his own brokerage, which ultimately scams several people, but the movie highlights the debauchery, opulence, and excess that ensued during his run.

"This almost sounds weird, but I'm going to say 'The Wolf of Wall Street,'" Matt Gilbert, a managing director at Thoma Bravo said. "The absurdity of that movie, to some extent, I do think, kind of incorporates some aspect of our job."

While finance is the backbone of the economy and certainly has global implications, what bankers and investors do on a day-to-day basis isn't saving lives, the 35-year-old added.

"I think the fact that you could have a comedy wrapped around the finance world is important, and it always makes me take a step back and think through, sure, I want to win every deal," he said. "Our fiduciary duty at Thoma Bravo is to produce the best returns for LPs, but this job is supposed to be fun. I'm supposed to work with great people. We're supposed to laugh together. I think if people take this job too seriously, that's when burnout and other things happen."

"The Big Short"

"The Big Short," the movie based on the financial journalist Michael Lewis' book, chronicles how Wall Street helped fuel the US housing crisis in 2008 and the investors who profited from it.

"It's not our day-to-day, but I think it is an OK representation of what happened at the time," said Chi Chen, 34, a portfolio manager at BlackRock. " Maybe it is not all factual, but it is a good one that is representative."

"The Internship"

Patrick Lenihan, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management, said "The Internship," which features two old-school salesmen trying to restart their careers through an internship at Google, reminds him of the importance of having and supporting a diverse team.

"I feel like that team with Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, the rest of them, and how they come together at first, you see there's just a variety of different people that you're like, 'Oh, this is going to fail,'" he said. "But I think a large part of my success is going back to that teamwork, getting the right people in, and ensuring that diversity of opinions."

Books: "Market Wizards"

BlackRock's Chen, who focuses on fixed income, said that to really gain insight into the investing industry, it's best to read the "Market Wizards" book series, which features interviews with top traders.

"A lot of those investing stories for that book series are more from two, three decades ago, when market volatility was much higher. But we have seen a comeback of market volatility since 2020," she said. "So I have always enjoyed that whole series of books."

"Free Food for Millionaires"

Elliott, the Bank of America VP, recommends Min Jin Lee's novel "Free Food for Millionaires."

"It's about a Korean woman navigating life who ends up on Wall Street in an admin capacity. But really, it's a story about belonging and identity — about trying to make it in a world and industry you didn't initially know much about," he said.

"To me, it's a lot more humanistic. It gives me a bit more of a personal perspective when I think about my journey on Wall Street. When I think about the people — and understanding people is so much of this job — I go back to 'Free Food for Millionaires.'"

"The Man Who Solved the Market"

There's no fictional piece of media Bridgewater's Blake Cecil has found to reflect life in finance; he said shows and movies "feel quite distant" from his day-to-day.

A biography of the late hedge-fund billionaire Jim Simons, "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution," reflects how the deputy chief investment officer and his colleagues approached challenges.

"It resonated with my experience of working with people who are using algorithms to solve problems that often hadn't been asked before," Cecil said.

"The Inner Game of Tennis"

Harrison DiGia, a vice president at General Atlantic, had another book recommendation: "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey.

"This book is all about the mental game and trusting your intuition and yourself. You use practice and your preparation before a competition so that when the time is right, or you have a big opportunity, you're ready, and your mental game is as strong as it can be," DiGia, 31, said.

"When I think about investing, a lot of it is setting yourself up to get that big opportunity and making sure you're prepared and can have a clear mind when that pressure situation comes. I'm a huge tennis fan, so I think about this when I'm on the tennis court, but I think about it in a professional setting as well."

"Unreasonable Hospitality"

In the book "Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect" by Will Guidara, the co-owner and general manager of Eleven Madison Park describes how he manages his business, his customer-service style, and the things he'd do at Eleven Madison Park to go above and beyond.

Craig Kolwicz, an investment banker at Moelis, said the "unreasonable hospitality" described in the book (such as having an employee run out to get a hot dog for a customer who you overheard saying they hadn't had one in New York yet) isn't dissimilar to the type of service that could differentiate an investment banker.

"It depicts a restaurant that's an extremely expensive restaurant where there's an extremely discerning clientele base. They could go to all these other really fancy, really nice three-Michelin-star restaurants in New York or in the world," the 35-year-old managing director said.

"How do you differentiate yourself? There's a lot of investment bankers out there and there's a lot of really smart clients and folks that we work with all the time — and how do we get them to stay with us? How do we get them to hire us on the next deal? It's some of the stuff that we do," he said. For example, he'd recently flown to Los Angeles for an 11:30 a.m. pitch meeting and flown back.

"It's like hospitality, but it's kind of an unreasonable client customer service to do something like that," Kolwicz said.

• JPMorgan tech exec Teresa Heitsenrether talked about the bank's ongoing adoption of generative AI.
• The bank has rolled out its "LLM suite" to 200,000 employees.
• Speaking at the Evident AI Symposium, Heitsenrether explained how it's been taken up and by who.

Before a business review with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Teresa Heitsenrether runs her presentation through one of the bank's generative AI tools to help her pinpoint the message she wants to convey to the top boss.

"I say, what is the message coming out of this? Make it more concise. Make it clear. And it certainly has helped with that," Heitsenrether, who is responsible for executing the bank's generative AI strategy, told a conference in New York on Thursday.

Dimon himself is a "tremendous user," she said, and is waiting for the ability to use the bank's tools on his phone.

"He's been desperate to get it on his phone and so that's a big deliverable before the end of the year, " Heitsenrether added.

JPMorgan, America's largest bank, has now rolled out the LLM Suite, a generative AI assistant, to 200,000 of its employees.

The tools are the first step in adopting AI technology across the firm. Heitsenrether, JPMorgan's chief data and analytics officer, speaking at the Evident AI Symposium, said that the next generation would go beyond helping employees write an email or summarize a document and link the tools with their everyday workflow to help people do their jobs.

"Basically go from the five minutes of efficiency to the five hours of efficiency," she added, saying it will take time to reach that goal.

'The flywheel effect'

The response to the LLM rollout has been "enthusiastic" and has created "healthy competition" between teams, she said. The wealth and asset management arm was the first division to use generative AI, piloting a generative AI "copilot" for its private bank this summer.

"When the investment bank found out they said 'Well, wait a minute, we want to be on there too,'" she said. "It does create a flywheel effect."

JPMorgan offers courses and in-person training for employees to use the firm's generative AI tools, such as how to prompt a chatbot properly, but the bank is also leaning on superusers, or the 10% to 20% of employees who are "really keen" to help with adoption.

"We embed people within different groups to be the local source of expertise to be able to help people that they work with understand how to adopt it," Heitsenrether explained.

The most common superusers seem to be those who clearly see the benefits of generative AI, such as a lawyer who saves hours by getting a synopsis of contracts or regulations instead of reading them all.

Despite Wall Street's interest in generative AI, getting workers to actually adopt the technology has been a key hurdle for finance firms, Accenture Consultant Keri Smith previously told BI. As a result, training and reskilling efforts have come under the spotlight, she said.

Heitsenrether said that they're trying to engage with the "pockets of resistance" now because it will be harder to convert them once the technology becomes intertwined with workflows.

She also said that the sooner people engage with AI, the less skeptical they are, and they see how it can augment, not replace, their jobs.

"Having it in your hands I think demystifies it quite a lot," Heitsenrether said. She used the example of a developer using it to more quickly write a test case. She said if they see the benefits, they realize "this is not something that's going to be done without me, but it's just a way to make my work that much more effective."

What's next: AI assistants

By this time next year, Heitsenrether told the audience that she hopes she'll be talking about "enabling employees with their own assistant" that's specific to them and their jobs.

Some of the legwork needed to develop those more autonomous forms of AI is currently being done in pilots, Sumitra Ganesh, a member of JPMorgan's AI research team, said during another panel.

Even still, the early use cases for AI workers will likely be constrained because these systems still need a human in the loop to ensure the reliability needed in such a regulated industry.

"We don't have a lot of trust right now in these systems," she said. Having an expert in the loop who can verify AI outputs is "kind of babysitting these agents at this point, but hopefully, it's like training wheels — at some point we will be confident enough to let them go," Ganesh said.