Goldman Sachs Pulls AI Coding Tools From Bankers and Traders

Goldman Sachs has restricted Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub to its engineers, ending access for most traders and bankers who used the tools, Bloomberg News reported. Internal guidance updated in October made the change after a review of productivity and risk concerns. Strats, who work across trading, quantitative research and software engineering, still have access, according to a second person familiar with the matter.

What changed

The change frustrated some traders, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. They had used the tools to monitor client trading flows, model market moves and positions, and put together written and graphic material. Goldman spokesperson Nick Carcaterra said the bank makes certain AI tools available to staff "to determine the best use cases" across the firm. Goldman's in-house AI assistant, which uses models from several companies, remains available across the firm. The restriction applies to third-party agents that can write and run code by themselves.

Earlier access and Hong Kong limits

As recently as July, chief information officer Marco Argenti praised "vibe coding" by non-technical employees. He said traders and bankers had built tools with AI and passed them to engineers to be improved, letting people closest to a problem build a first version without waiting for engineering time. At a conference in Turin last month, Argenti described Goldman's AI adoption in waves and said developers, more than 12,000 of the bank's roughly 47,000 staff, made up the first. In April, Goldman removed Claude from its internal AI platform for bankers in Hong Kong. The Financial Times reported that the bank had read its contract with Anthropic strictly, and an Anthropic spokesperson said Claude had never been officially supported in Hong Kong. ChatGPT and Gemini remained available there. JPMorgan removed Claude from its Hong Kong approved list in June. The Hong Kong restriction was based on location and contract terms, while the new one is based on role.

Risks and Anthropic ties

Claude Code reads files, writes programs and runs them, typically with the same access as the person using it. Code an engineer writes with it usually goes through review, testing and deployment controls before it reaches anything important. A script a trader builds to watch client flows can end up in daily use without those controls. Banks must keep information barriers between groups, such as between bankers working on deals and traders who could profit from knowing about them. A tool a trader puts together with an agent was not designed with those controls in mind, and engineers can only check it if someone sends it their way. Goldman said earlier this year that Anthropic engineers spent six months at the bank helping build Claude-based agents for trade accounting and client onboarding, run by Goldman's engineering teams. Goldman and Morgan Stanley are lead underwriters on Anthropic's IPO, according to an S-1 filed October 26. Anthropic is expected to list on Nasdaq under ticker ANT before the end of November.

Other banks

Barclays said in October that it expects half its developers to be using Claude Code by the end of the year, and three weeks later named developers among 5,000 job cuts. Like Goldman, it is giving coding agents to engineers; unlike Goldman, it is also using them to reduce how many engineers it employs. JPMorgan and Schwab are blocking outside agents from customer accounts, and Goldman has now set limits on which of its own employees can use them.

Sources: thestateofai.com