David Solomon’s most definitive statement about how AI will affect Goldman came in a memo he released in 2025 alongside the firm’s president, John Waldron, and CFO Denis Coleman.
The memo, announcing the third iteration of the bank’s cross-bank initiative OneGS, said that AI will drive efficiency at the firm, which will mean slowing hiring and reducing roles. (Goldman, with its yearly culling of some employees, is no stranger to job cuts.)
“We will constrain head count growth through the end of the year, in addition to a limited reduction in roles across the firm,” the memo read. “These targeted steps are consistent with our priorities of gaining more agility and creating the right team structures in order to implement effective AI solutions.”
More recently, Goldman Sachs President John Waldron said generative AI is helping the bank automate more work and operate more efficiently without clearly signaling what it means for hiring.
“I often describe Goldman Sachs as a human assembly line,” Waldron said Tuesday on CNBC, comparing Wall Street’s AI push to the automation that transformed manufacturing.
Waldron said generative AI is allowing Goldman to digitize workflows, boost productivity, and cut costs.
“Our human assembly lines will become more digitized, digital agents will be our robots,” Waldron said. “I’m not sure dynamically how the overall headcount will change, but I think the firm is going to get much more resilient and much more scalable.”
Solomon has previously said that slowing hiring and increasing head count don’t need to be contradictory; instead, the firm is focusing its hiring on the right talent.
“We need more high-value people,” he told Axios last year. “We can afford more high-value people to expand our footprint and continue to grow and broaden our business.”
He has said he continues to believe that AI will grow the firm’s head count over the next 10 years.
