Goldman Sachs is rolling out a generative AI assistant to its bankers, traders and asset managers, the first stage in the evolution of a program that will eventually take on the traits of a seasoned Goldman employee, according to Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti.
The bank has released a program called GS AI assistant to about 10,000 employees so far, with the goal that all the company’s knowledge workers will have it this year, Argenti told CNBC in an exclusive interview. It will initially help with tasks including summarizing or proofreading emails or translating code from one language to another.
“Think about all the tasks that you might want to complete with regards to a variety of use cases for all those professions that can be now at your fingertips,” Argenti said. The Goldman assistant is a “very simple interface that allows you to have access to the latest and greatest models.”
Goldman’s move means that, along with JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, the world’s top three investment banks have aggressively released generative AI tools to their workforce, a remarkable development since ChatGPT went viral about two years ago.
Wall Street has embraced generative artificial intelligence faster than any other disruptive technology in recent years, experts say, because of how adept large language models are in replicating aspects of human cognition.
Today it can respond to queries, write emails and summarize lengthy documents, but expectations are high that future versions will exhibit so-called “agentic” abilities, meaning they can perform multi-step tasks with little human intervention.
In speaking with CNBC about his vision for artificial intelligence at the firm, Argenti — who joined from Amazon in 2019 — repeatedly likened the AI program to a new employee that will absorb Goldman culture over the coming years.
Initially, the tool will mostly produce answers based on Goldman data that has been fed into AI models from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama, depending on the task, said Argenti. The bank is also looking at models from companies including Anthropic, Mistral and Cohere, he added.
“The AI assistant becomes really like talking to another GS employee,” Argenti said.
Learning the Goldman Way
“As we progress, the second step is when you’re starting to have this agentic behavior, that is, ‘I’m completing a task on behalf of a Goldman employee, and I need to take a set of steps’,” he said. “That’s where the model is going to start to do things like a Goldman employee, not only say things like a Goldman employee.”
This helps explain why companies have forbid employees from using ChatGPT for work, instead moving to create their own platforms to tap the technology. It allows firms to not only keep their information secure, but to also craft AI platforms that increasingly resemble the best examples of their own workforce.
“For the AI to have a very specific identity that reflects the tenets, the values, the knowledge and the way of thinking of the firm is extremely important,” Argenti said.
In practice, that means that just as an experienced Goldman employee would know to double check their work with multiple data sources or use a specific algorithm for a calculation, the AI will absorb those lessons, he said.
Marco Argenti, chief information officer for Goldman Sachs, joined the bank from Amazon in 2019.
Courtesy: Goldman Sachs
But Argenti says he is most excited by the prospect of what comes later, in perhaps three to five years, as AI models increasingly blur the lines between human and machine thinking.
This stage of AI at Goldman would have the model “actually reason more and become more like the way a Goldman employee would think,” he said.
So instead of being handed a run book, which is tech industry parlance for a set of step-by-step instructions for completing tasks or responding to incidents, the AI would be able to generate detailed plans “in the way that an experienced Goldman employee would do,” Argenti said.
Disruption risk
The prospects of that future — and the fact that Wall Street’s workers are helping train a technology that may make some roles obsolete, while augmenting other jobs and creating new roles altogether — may send a fresh wave of anxiety through employee ranks.
Like at Goldman, other major investment banks are on target to give generative AI tools to their entire workforces in the coming months.
More than 200,000 JPMorgan employees currently have access to in-house generative AI tools, according to a person with knowledge of that bank who declined to be identified speaking about internal matters. Roughly 40,000 Morgan Stanley employees had access to it as of late last year, the bank said in October.
Finance and technology are seen as among the industries where employees are most prone to upheaval because of generative AI, allowing companies to potentially generate billions of dollars in additional profits. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan earlier this month that its AI will be capable of writing code as well as mid-level software engineers this year.
Global investment banks may shed as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as the companies implement AI, according to a report from Bloomberg’s research arm. The report, based on a survey of tech executives at major banks, said that support and operations roles known as the back and middle office were most at risk.
At Goldman, however, the official stance is that AI will empower employees to do more, not necessarily result in the need for fewer humans.
“The importance of having a phenomenal human workforce is actually going to be amplified,” Argenti said.
“In my opinion, it always boils down to people,” he said. “People are going to make a difference, because people are going to be the ones that actually evolve the AI, educate the AI, empower the AI, and then take action.”
Leading analyst Craig Moffett suggests any plans to move U.S. iPhone assembly to India is unrealistic.
Moffett, ranked as a top analyst multiple times by Institutional Investor, sent a memo to clients on Friday after the Financial Times reported Apple was aiming to shift production toward India from China by the end of next year.
He’s questioning how a move could bring down costs tied to tariffs because the iPhone components would still be made in China.
“You have a tremendous menu of problems created by tariffs, and moving to India doesn’t solve all the problems. Now granted, it helps to some degree,” the MoffettNathanson partner and senior managing director told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Friday. “I would question how that’s going to work.”
Moffett contends it’s not so easy to diversify to India — telling clients Apple’s supply chain would still be anchored in China and would likely face resistance.
“The bottom line is a global trade war is a two-front battle, impacting costs and sales. Moving assembly to India might (and we emphasize might) help with the former. The latter may ultimately be the bigger issue,” he wrote to clients.
Moffett cut his Apple price target on Monday to $141 from $184 a share. It implies a 33% drop from Friday’s close. The price target is also the Street low, according to FactSet.
“I don’t think of myself as the biggest Apple bear,” he said. “I think quite highly of Apple. My concern about Apple has been the valuation more than the company.”
Moffett has had a “sell” rating on Apple since Jan. 7. Since then, the company’s shares are down about 14%.
“None of this is because Apple is a bad company. They still have a great balance sheet [and] a great consumer franchise,” he said. “It’s just the reality of there are no good answers when you are a product company, and your products are going to be significantly tariffed, and you’re heading into a market that is likely to have at least some deceleration in consumer demand because of the macro economy.”
Moffett notes Apple also isn’t getting help from its carriers to cushion the blow of tariffs.
“You also have the demand destruction that’s created by potentially higher prices. Remember, you had AT&T, Verizon and T. Mobile all this week come out and say we’re not going to underwrite the additional cost of tariff [on] handsets,” he added. “The consumer is going to have to pay for that. So, you’re going to have some demand destruction that’s going to show up in even longer holding periods and slower upgrade rates — all of which probably trims estimates next year’s consensus.”
According to Moffett, the backlash against Apple in China over U.S. tariffs will also hurt iPhone sales.
“It’s a very real problem,” Moffett said. “Volumes are really going to the Huaweis and the Vivos and the local competitors in China rather than to Apple.”
Apple stock is coming off a winning week — up more than 6%. It comes ahead of the iPhone maker’s quarterly earnings report due next Thursday after the market close.
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In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.
That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF(OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.
In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.
“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.
Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”
The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.
So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.
People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.
Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.
“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”
“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.
He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.
“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”
The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.
“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”
Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.
Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.
Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.