Goldman Sachs has narrowed access to advanced AI coding tools, Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub tools, to its engineers, cutting off most of the traders and bankers who had been using them. Internal guidance updated in October, seen by Bloomberg, set out the change, after the bank had let staff across the business use the tools for several months.
“After a period of experimentation where we assess a variety of factors including productivity and risk management, we put them in the hands of those who are best suited to leverage them for the long term”
Nick Carcaterra, Goldman Sachs spokesperson, to FStech · fstech.co.uk ↗
The bank has about 12,000 engineers. Traders had folded the tools into daily work, using them to watch client trading flows, model market moves and position changes, and produce text and visuals, and some were frustrated by the loss. "Strats", whose jobs combine trading, quant research and software engineering, are exempt. Gadget Review alone puts the number of bankers and traders who lost access at roughly 10,000; the other outlets say only "most". The bank's in-house AI assistant, which draws on models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet, is reportedly still widely available.
Spokesperson Nick Carcaterra framed the move as routine: tools are offered to see where they fit best, then given long term to those best placed to use them once productivity and risk management have been weighed. Gadget Review notes that Goldman has not said what its review found, and reads the change as a response to the difficulty of reviewing AI-written code in a regulated firm when the person prompting is not the one accountable.
Illustration used by Gadget Review for its story on Goldman's restriction of AI coding tools
Image: Gadget Review
The shift follows mixed signals. In July chief information officer Marco Argenti praised traders and bankers for prototyping with AI and handing work to engineers. In August a partner warned that leaning on AI could dull future bankers' analytical skills. Earlier in the year Goldman restricted Claude for staff in Hong Kong, and in May president John Waldron described the bank as a "human assembly line" with room for automation.
About Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company, founded in 1869 by Marcus Goldman and headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
Its AI push predates this restriction. In February 2026 chief information officer Marco Argenti said the bank had spent six months building autonomous AI agents with embedded Anthropic engineers, for trade accounting and client onboarding. Goldman had begun 2025 by testing the autonomous coder Devin, which by February 2026 was broadly available to its engineers, before finding Claude useful beyond coding, in accounting and compliance. Argenti called it "premature" to expect job losses from the agents, saying the bank was "injecting capacity".
No date or next step has been named. Dealroom frames the open question as whether coding assistants can deliver safe gains beyond tech teams.
Sources · 3