JPMorgan Chase has rolled out a generative artificial intelligence assistant to tens of thousands of its employees in recent weeks, the initial phase of a broader plan to inject the technology throughout the sprawling financial giant.
The program, called LLM Suite, is already available to more than 60,000 employees, helping them with tasks like writing emails and reports. The software is expected to eventually be as ubiquitous within the bank as the videoconferencing program Zoom, people with knowledge of the plans told CNBC.
Rather than developing its own AI models, JPMorgan designed LLM Suite to be a portal that allows users to tap external large language models — the complex programs underpinning generative AI tools — and launched it with ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s LLM, said the people.
“Ultimately, we’d like to be able to move pretty fluidly across models depending on the use cases,” Teresa Heitsenrether, JPMorgan’s chief data and analytics officer, said in an interview. “The plan is not to be beholden to any one model provider.”
The move by JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, shows how quickly generative AI has swept through American corporations since the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022. Rival bank Morgan Stanley has already released a pair of OpenAI-powered tools for its financial advisors. And consumer tech giant Apple said in June that it was integrating OpenAI models into the operating system of hundreds of millions of its consumer devices, vastly expanding its reach.
The technology — hailed by some as the “Cognitive Revolution” in which tasks formerly done by knowledge workers will be automated — could be as important as the advent of electricity, the printing press and the internet, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in April.
It will likely “augment virtually every job” at the bank, Dimon said. JPMorgan had about 313,000 employees as of June.
ChatGPT ban
The bank is giving employees what is essentially OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a JPMorgan-approved wrapper more than a year after it restricted employees from using ChatGPT. That’s because JPMorgan didn’t want to expose its data to external providers, Heitsenrether said.
“Since our data is a key differentiator, we don’t want it being used to train the model,” she said. “We’ve implemented it in a way that we can leverage the model while still keeping our data protected.”
The bank has introduced LLM Suite broadly across the company, with groups using it in JPMorgan’s consumer division, investment bank, and asset and wealth management business, the people said. It can help employees with writing, summarizing lengthy documents, problem solving using Excel, and generating ideas.
But getting it on employees’ desktops is just the first step, according to Heitsenrether, who was promoted in 2023 to lead the bank’s adoption of the red-hot technology.
“You have to teach people how to do prompt engineering that is relevant for their domain to show them what it can actually do,” Heitsenrether said. “The more people get deep into it and unlock what it’s good at and what it’s not, the more we’re starting to see the ideas really flourishing.”
The bank’s engineers can also use LLM Suite to incorporate functions from external AI models directly into their programs, she said.
‘Exponentially bigger’
JPMorgan has been working on traditional AI and machine learning for more than a decade, but the arrival of ChatGPT forced it to pivot.
Traditional, or narrow, AI performs specific tasks involving pattern recognition, like making predictions based on historical data. Generative AI is more advanced, however, and trains models on vast data sets with the goal of pattern creation, which is how human-sounding text or realistic images are formed.
The number of uses for generative AI are “exponentially bigger” than previous technology because of how flexible LLMs are, Heitsenrether said.
The bank is testing many cases for both forms of AI and has already put a few into production.
JPMorgan is using generative AI to create marketing content for social media channels, map out itineraries for clients of the travel agency it acquired in 2022 and summarize meetings for financial advisors, she said.
The consumer bank uses AI to determine where to place new branches and ATMs by ingesting satellite images and in call centers to help service personnel quickly find answers, Heitsenrether said.
In the firm’s global-payments business, which moves more than $8 trillion around the world daily, AI helps prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, she said.
But the bank is being more cautious with generative AI that directly touches upon the individual customer because of the risk that a chatbot gives bad information, Heitsenrether said.
Ultimately, the generative AI field may develop into “five or six big foundational models” that dominate the market, she said.
The bank is testing LLMs from U.S. tech giants as well as open source models to onboard to its portal next, said the people, who declined to be identified speaking about the bank’s AI strategy.
Friend or foe?
Heitsenrether charted out three stages for the evolution of generative AI at JPMorgan.
The first is simply making the models available to workers; the second involves adding proprietary JPMorgan data to help boost employee productivity, which is the stage that has just begun at the company.
The third is a larger leap that would unlock far greater productivity gains, which is when generative AI is powerful enough to operate as autonomous agents that perform complex multistep tasks. That would make rank-and-file employees more like managers with AI assistants at their command.
The technology will likely empower some workers while displacing others, changing the composition of the industry in ways that are hard to predict.
Banking jobs are the most prone to automation of all industries, including technology, health care and retail, according to consulting firm Accenture. AI could boost the sector’s profits by $170 billion in just four years, Citigroup analysts said.
People should consider generative AI “like an assistant that takes away the more mundane things that we would all like to not do, where it can just give you the answer without grinding through the spreadsheets,” Heitsenrether said.
“You can focus on the higher-value work,” she said.
— CNBC’s Leslie Picker contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump speaks before signing executive orders in the Oval Office on March 6, 2025.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
President Donald Trump says that tariffs will make the U.S. “rich.” But those riches will likely be far less than the White House expects, economists said.
The ultimate sum could have big ramifications for the U.S. economy, the nation’s debt and legislative negotiations over a tax-cut package, economists said.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Sunday estimated tariffs would raise about $600 billion a year and $6 trillion over a decade. Auto tariffs would add another $100 billion a year, he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Navarro made the projection as the U.S. plans to announce more tariffs against U.S. trading partners on Wednesday.
Economists expect the Trump administration’s tariff policy would generate a much lower amount of revenue than Navarro claims. Some project the total revenue would be less than half.
Roughly $600 billion to $700 billion a year “is not even in the realm of possibility,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s. “If you get to $100 billion to $200 billion, you’ll be pretty lucky.”
The White House declined to respond to a request for comment from CNBC about tariff revenue.
The ‘mental math’ behind tariff revenue
There are big question marks over the scope of the tariffs, including details like amount, duration, and products and countries affected — all of which have a significant bearing on the revenue total.
The White House is considering a 20% tariff on most imports, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday. President Trump floated this idea on the campaign trail. The Trump administration may ultimately opt for a different policy, like country-by-country tariffs based on each nation’s respective trade and non-trade barriers.
But a 20% tariff rate seems to align with Navarro’s revenue projections, economists said.
The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024. Applying a 20% tariff rate to all these imports would yield about $660 billion of annual revenue.
“That is almost certainly the mental math Peter Navarro is doing — and that mental math skips some crucial steps,” said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab and former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration.
Trade advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump Peter Navarro speaks to press outside of the White House on March 12, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images
That’s because an accurate revenue estimate must account for the many economic impacts of tariffs in the U.S. and around the world, economists said. Those effects combine to reduce revenue, they said.
A 20% broad tariff would raise about $250 billion a year (or $2.5 trillion over a decade) when taking those effects into account, according to Tedeschi, citing a Yale Budget Lab analysis published Monday.
There are ways to raise larger sums — but they would involve higher tariff rates, economists said. For example, a 50% across-the-board tariff would raise about $780 billion per year, according to economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Even that is an optimistic assessment: It doesn’t account for lower U.S. economic growth due to retaliation or the negative growth effects from the tariffs themselves, they wrote.
Why revenue would be lower than expected
Tariffs generally raise prices for consumers. A 20% broad tariff would cost the average consumer $3,400 to $4,200 a year, according to the Yale Budget Lab.
Consumers would naturally buy fewer imported goods if they cost more, economists said. Lower demand means fewer imports and less tariff revenue from those imports, they said.
Tariffs are also expected to trigger “reduced economic activity,” said Robert McClelland, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
For example, U.S. companies that don’t pass tariff costs on to consumers via higher prices would likely see profits suffer (and their income taxes fall), economists said. Consumers might pull back on spending, further denting company profits and tax revenues, economists said. Companies that take a financial hit might lay off workers, they said.
Foreign nations are also expected to retaliate with their own tariffs on U.S. products, which would hurt companies that export products abroad. Other nations may experience an economic downturn, further reducing demand for U.S. products.
“If you get a 20% tariff rate, you’re going to get a rip-roaring recession, and that will undermine your fiscal situation,” Zandi said.
There’s also likely to be a certain level of non-compliance with tariff policy, and carve-outs for certain countries, industries or products, economists said. For instance, when the White House levied tariffs on China in February, it indefinitely exempted “de minimis” imports valued at $800 or less.
The Trump administration might also funnel some tariff revenue to paying certain parties aggrieved by a trade war, economists said.
President Trump did that in his first term: The government sent $61 billion in “relief” payments to American farmers who faced retaliatory tariffs, which was nearly all (92%) of the tariff revenue on Chinese goods from 2018 to 2020, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The tariffs will also likely have a short life span, diluting their potential revenue impact, economists said. They’re being issued by executive order and could be undone easily, whether by President Trump or a future president, they said.
“There’s zero probability these tariffs will last for 10 years,” Zandi said. “If they last until next year I’d be very surprised.”
Why this matters
The Trump administration has signaled that tariffs “will be one of the top-tier ways they’ll try to offset the cost” of passing a package of tax cuts, Tedeschi said.
Extending a 2017 tax cut law signed by President Trump would cost $4.5 trillion over a decade, according to the Tax Foundation. Trump has also called for other tax breaks like no taxes on tips, overtime pay or Social Security benefits, and a tax deduction for auto loan interest for American made cars.
If tariffs don’t cover the full cost of such a package, then Republican lawmakers would have to find cuts elsewhere or increase the nation’s debt, economists said.
Wall Street is hoping April 2 will provide the clarity on the U.S. tariff front and a reprieve from the recent market volatility. However, many remain skeptical that any real clarity is coming any time soon. Stocks have been in turmoil this year, as investors struggle to price in the full breadth and depth of President Donald Trump’s policies that are shifting the lines of global trade. The S & P 500 was last more than 8% off its all-time high, after falling into correction territory earlier this year. The Nasdaq Composite is more than 13% off its recent peak. A clear enough blueprint from Trump when he takes to the Rose Garden on Wednesday afternoon to announce his plan for reciprocal tariffs could give investors some much-needed certainty. But few expect that will be the end of it. “Personally, I don’t believe that if you just get a framework announced, no matter what it is, that’s enough for a relief rally,” said Gabriela Santos, chief market strategist for the Americas at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “I think you need a detailed framework, and you need there to be a certain amount of tariffs on a certain amount of countries for a certain amount of time for it to be able to be digested by the economy, — and ultimately by the markets, which I think have only started to price this in,” Santos said. There is hope of an April rebound for the stock market. The S & P 500 has done well in April when it’s started the month below its 200-day moving average, according to Oppenheimer technical strategist Ari Wald. Typically, it averages a 2.5% advance for the month, and is positive 73% of the time going back to 1950. The worst case scenario But investors will need some key questions answered around trade policy, in addition to some reassurance that the economic picture is not as bad as feared, for the market to truly rebound from here. Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, worries that a “maximalist” approach to tariff policy from the Trump administration — meaning a tariff on all 15 countries the U.S. has a persistent trade deficit with — would bring the average tariff rate to over 16%, from 10.5% where he said it’s currently projected to go to. In 2024, the tariff money collected as a share of total imports equated 2.5%, according to the Tax Foundation. For investors, that would further ding the outlook for economic growth and inflation, and raise fears of a stagflation scenario taking hold. In that maximalist scenario, Ryan expects real GDP growth will take a 1 to 1.5 percentage point hit. Fears of slower economic growth — sparked in part by tariffs — already have market observers cutting their year-end forecasts for the S & P 500. David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, lowered his 2025 target for a second time this year , to 5,700 from 6,200. What’s clear, at least, is that Wednesday could be the start, not the end, of a long road ahead. Christopher Harvey, head of equity strategy at Wells Fargo Securities, said he remains constructive on equities. However, worries the risks around the so-called liberation day are “not small” and could lead to a recession. “We have no inside beat on how long these new tariffs will last. We simply believe that the depth and the breadth of tariffs, and the number of stakeholders involved, creates a significant number of permutations and combinations,” Harvey wrote in a note. “Governments, which are generally not fast moving entities, may first determine whether they want to retaliate; even if they do not, we see a long road to the negotiation table.” “We believe the process (even under the most optimistic scenario) will require weeks/months of discussions before official changes can even be considered,” Harvey continued. “The bottom line is we think investors and investors’ portfolios need to get comfortable with uncertainty.” Get Your Ticket to Pro LIVE Join us at the New York Stock Exchange!| Uncertain markets? Gain an edge with CNBC Pro LIVE , an exclusive, inaugural event at the historic New York Stock Exchange. In today’s dynamic financial landscape, access to expert insights is paramount. As a CNBC Pro subscriber, we invite you to join us for our first exclusive, in-person CNBC Pro LIVE event at the iconic NYSE on Thursday, June 12. Join interactive Pro clinics led by our Pros Carter Worth, Dan Niles, and Dan Ives, with a special edition of Pro Talks with Tom Lee. You’ll also get the opportunity to network with CNBC experts, talent and other Pro subscribers during an exciting cocktail hour on the legendary trading floor. Tickets are limited!
AQR Capital Management’s multistrategy hedge fund beat the market with a 9% rally in the first quarter as Wall Street grappled with extreme volatility amid President Donald Trump’s uncertain tariff policy.
The Apex strategy from Cliff Asness’ firm, which combines stocks, macro and arbitrage trades and has $3 billion in assets under management, gained 3.4% in March, boosting its first-quarter performance, according to a person familiar with AQR’s returns who asked to be anonymous as the information is private.
AQR’s Delphi Long-Short Equity Strategy gained 9.7% in the first quarter, while its alternative trend-following offering Helix returned 3%, the person said.
AQR, whose assets under management reached $128 billion at the end of March, declined to comment.
The stock market just wrapped up a tumultuous quarter as Trump’s aggressive tariffs raised concerns about an severe economic slowdown and a re-acceleration of inflation. The S&P 500 dipped into correction territory in March after hitting a record in February.
For the quarter, the equity benchmark was down 4.6%, snapping a five-quarter win streak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 10.4% in the quarter, which would mark its biggest quarterly pullback since a 22.4% plunge in the second quarter of 2022.