Goldman Sachs has restricted access to advanced AI coding tools for most employees, allowing only software engineers to use applications such as Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub. The decision has frustrated some employees, particularly traders who had been using these tools to speed up their daily work, Bloomberg reported.
The restrictions follow months of experimentation with AI tools across the bank's trading and banking teams. Employees had used the applications for tasks such as tracking client trading patterns, analysing market movements, preparing reports and creating visual content.
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The bank tightened access after reviewing how the tools were being used, along with concerns around productivity and risk management.
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The decision is a shift from the bank's earlier push to encourage wider AI use among employees. In July, Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti had praised 'vibe coding', a practice that allows people without technical expertise, including bankers and traders, to build basic AI-powered tools. These early versions could then be passed on to the bank's 12,000 engineers for further development.
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs explained the rationale behind the update: "We make certain AI tools available to our people to determine the best use cases across different parts of the firm. 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."
The development highlights the ongoing challenges faced across Wall Street as financial institutions attempt to balance substantial investments in AI technology against escalating cybersecurity risks, operational costs, and productivity metrics.
Several other large banks are also trying to strike a balance between wider AI adoption and the costs associated with the technology. Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase & Co urged employees to match AI models to the complexity of their assignments, rather than deploying expensive systems for routine tasks. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, has built an in-house AI assistant that draws on models developed by technology companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet.
Greater caution over the use of AI within banks has done little to dampen Wall Street's enthusiasm for the industry's growth prospects. Goldman Sachs continues to position itself to benefit from the expanding market, having recently served as a lead underwriter for major technology listings in the pipeline. It has also worked with Nvidia Corporation on large-scale debt transactions.
The new restrictions are not universal. Specialist employees known as 'strats', whose work spans trading, quantitative research and software engineering, continue to enjoy certain exemptions. The distinction highlights the difficulty financial institutions face in developing AI policies that allow innovation to flourish while maintaining adequate controls over operational and regulatory risks.
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