Goldman Sachs Pilots AI Coder Devin: A New Era of Hybrid Workforce on Wall Street

Goldman Sachs is testing viral AI agent Devin as a 'new employee' | TechCrunch

Cognition's AI coding agent Devin has scored a major customer: Goldman Sachs, the bank's CIO, Marco Argenti, told CNBC. "We're going to start augmenting our workforce with Devin, which is going to be like our new employee," Argenti told the outlet, adding that it plans to roll out hundreds of instances of Devin, potentially growing to thousands. The bank currently employs around 12,000 human developers, it says. Despite the financial industry's reputation for being slow and stodgy, Goldman Sachs tends to be cutting edge, and it's been internally using developer copilots since at least 2024, it said. Devin is an interesting choice. When Cognition released it last year, it blew up on social media. Some researchers then found that it struggled with more complex coding work. As of May, Devin is now on version 2.1, and Cognition says, performs best on large codebases that provide it with ample context. Devin won't replace humans at the bank. Argenti advocates for a "hybrid" workforce, so instances of it will be supervised by a human and, he hopes, improve their productivity.

Goldman Sachs is piloting its first autonomous coder in major AI milestone for Wall Street

A screen displays the the company logo for Goldman Sachs on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., May 7, 2025. The bank is testing an autonomous software engineer from artificial intelligence startup Cognition that is expected to soon join the ranks of the firm's 12,000 human developers, Goldman tech chief Marco Argenti told CNBC. The program, named Devin, became known in technology circles last year with Cognition's claim that it had created the world's first AI software engineer. Demo videos showed the program operating as a full-stack engineer, completing multi-step assignments with minimal intervention. "We're going to start augmenting our workforce with Devin, which is going to be like our new employee who's going to start doing stuff on the behalf of our developers," Argenti said this week in an interview. "Initially, we will have hundreds of Devins [and] that might go into the thousands, depending on the use cases," he said. It's the latest indicator of the dizzying speed in which AI is being adopted in the corporate world. Just last year, Wall Street firms including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were rolling out cognitive assistants based on OpenAI models to get employees acquainted with the technology. Now, the arrival of agentic AI on Wall Street -- referencing programs like Devin that don't just help humans with tasks like summarizing documents or writing emails, but instead execute complex multi-step jobs like building entire apps -- signals a much larger shift, with greater potential rewards. Tech giants including Microsoft and Alphabet have said AI is already producing about 30% of the code on some projects, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said last month that AI handles as much as 50% of the work at his company. At Goldman Sachs, one of the world's top investment banks, this more powerful form of AI has the potential to boost worker productivity by up to three or four times the rate of previous AI tools, according to Argenti. Devin will be supervised by human employees and will handle jobs that engineers often consider drudgery, like updating internal code to newer programing languages, he said.

Goldman Sachs adds AI coder Devin to its headcount

Goldman Sachs just hired a coder who doesn't sleep, eat, or cash a paycheck. The investment bank announced Friday that it's testing Devin, an AI software engineer built by London-based startup Cognition, with plans to deploy the autonomous program across its tech teams, according to Goldman's chief information officer, Marco Argenti. "We're going to start augmenting our workforce with Devin, which is going to be like our new employee who's going to start doing stuff on the behalf of our developers," Argenti told CNBC. "Initially, we will have hundreds of Devins [and] that might go into the thousands, depending on the use cases." Devin rose to prominence last year when Cognition claimed it had created the world's first AI software engineer. Demo videos showed the system working end to end as a full-stack developer that is capable of completing multistep coding tasks with very little human input. Devin's "hire" signals more than just an experiment; Goldman has 12,000 developers on staff. According to Argenti, the bank plans to scale Devin "into the thousands" -- potentially transforming productivity by a factor of three to four (compared with previous-generation assistants) for software teams. Devin will focus on the kind of routine jobs engineers often dread -- such as updating legacy code -- under the supervision of human developers. Devin was built by Cognition, a startup founded in late 2023 that is already valued at nearly $4 billion. The company is backed by Palantir's Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, among others. While Goldman is using Devin, it doesn't own a stake in the company, a source familiar with the bank's investments told CNBC. This move comes amid Goldman's rollout of its GS AI Assistant, a firm-wide generative AI platform already in use across investment banking, wealth management, and research roles. The platform works with models from OpenAI, Google's Gemini, and others to power tools for summarizing documents, drafting analyses, and generating production software code. But Goldman's embrace of AI coding tools raises some big questions. The move comes as AI continues to reshape white-collar work across industries. But rather than using generative AI, Devin represents a new class of "agentic AI" -- systems designed to work autonomously, not just to assist with emails or research but to execute entire workflows from start to finish. The potential implications for labor are already sparking concern. Bloomberg Intelligence said in January that banks could cut as many as 200,000 jobs globally over the next three to five years due to AI adoption. Argenti said Goldman sees a future where humans and AIs work in tandem, describing it as a "hybrid workforce." "It's really about people and AIs working side by side," Argenti said. "Engineers are going to be expected to have the ability to really describe problems in a coherent way and turn it into prompts ... and then be able to supervise the work of those agents." But while the official messaging might emphasize augmentation over replacement, Goldman's president, John Waldron, in late May, cited 20% productivity gains among developer teams using AI tools, hinting at leaner future headcounts. Not all roles are created equal. MarketWatch reporting warned that traditional analyst paths -- the entry‑level conveyor belt -- could shrink dramatically. Still, jobs that demand sector expertise, client relationships, and high‑stakes judgment are expected to remain resilient, even as routine coding and research tasks become increasingly automated. Argenti told CNBC of Devin: "Those models are basically just as good as any developer; it's really cool." Whether that's terrifying or exciting probably depends on at which side of the keyboard you sit.

Meet Devin: Goldman Sachs' new AI software engineer that never sleeps

Subscribe to the Daily newsletter.Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day Cognition introduced the technology, which it hailed as the world's "first AI software engineer," last year. That tech, known as Devin, was designed to execute software engineering tasks independently, making thousands of decisions along the way. Using natural language prompts, programmers can put Devin to work doing complex tasks like building an app or finding and fixing bugs in a codebase. Cognition describes Devin as a "a tireless, skilled teammate, equally ready to build alongside you or independently complete tasks for you to review" - a description as likely to strike fear in the hearts of workers as it is to have executives seeing dollar signs. Shortly after its launch, the founder of prominent AI search engine Perplexity praised Cognition's Devin as the first AI agent "that seems to cross the threshold of what is human level and works reliably." The company was valued at $4 billion in March after raising hundreds of millions in investment led by 8VC, an early stage venture capital firm founded by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Cognition is obviously leaning on Devin's anthropomorphic branding to generate buzz and make Devin feel like a one to one substitute for a human that can write code, but so far that strategy seems to be working.

Goldman Bets On AI Developer To Boost Productivity -- Could This Be The Future Of Wall Street Jobs? - Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE:GS)

Goldman Sachs GS has begun testing Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer developed by Cognition Labs, as it seeks to integrate AI agents alongside its 12,000 human developers, tech chief Marco Argenti told CNBC. Argenti said the firm will start deploying hundreds -- and eventually thousands -- of Devins to handle routine engineering tasks, such as updating internal codebases. These AI agents will operate under human supervision, significantly boosting developer productivity. Also Read: Goldman Sachs Isn't Just A Trading Powerhouse, Analyst Says It's Entering New Era Of Growth Goldman becomes the first major bank to pilot Devin, which gained attention in 2024 after Cognition Labs claimed it had built the world's first fully autonomous software engineer. The startup, valued at nearly $4 billion, counts Peter Thiel's Founders Fund among its backers. Argenti described the initiative as a step toward a "hybrid workforce," where humans and AI work side by side. The move underscores Wall Street's accelerating adoption of agentic AI tools, which extend beyond assisting with tasks and executing complex, multi-step projects, such as building apps or modernizing infrastructure. As AI adoption grows, concerns about job displacement continue. Bloomberg's research unit estimates that banks may cut up to 200,000 jobs in the next 3-5 years due to AI automation. Goldman's approach, however, utilizes AI to offload repetitive tasks, allowing human developers to focus on higher-value projects. Alibaba Group BABA, Salesforce CRM and Microsoft MSFT each expect AI to play a central role in reshaping the modern workplace by handling routine tasks and boosting human productivity. Alibaba forecasts that AI-powered digital colleagues -- virtual assistants capable of performing repetitive work -- will become common within five years. According to Huang Fei, VP at Alibaba Cloud, these AI agents are already gaining traction across industries, allowing employees to focus more on strategic and creative work. At Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff said in June that AI now completes up to 50% of tasks in areas such as engineering and support. He even joked about AI replacing him, underscoring its expanding influence in leadership and operations. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also weighed in, stating in March that AI won't replace knowledge workers but will redefine cognitive tasks, much like email or spreadsheets have transformed office work. He sees AI agents freeing people to focus on high-value activities. Price Action: GS stock is down 1.29% at $700.00 premarket as of last check on Friday. Read Next: Amazon CEO Says Generative AI Will Reduce Total Corporate Workforce Photo: Shutterstock GSThe Goldman Sachs Group Inc$703.00-0.86%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum86.10Growth71.18Quality41.05ValueN/APrice TrendShortMediumLongOverviewBABAAlibaba Group Holding Ltd$106.900.24%CRMSalesforce Inc$263.00-0.37%MSFTMicrosoft Corp$499.49-0.40%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs