Goldman Sachs Deploys Agentic AI for Software Engineering, Raises Job Loss Concerns

Goldman Sachs has become the first major bank to deploy virtual software engineers on real production tasks, using agentic AI developed by Cognition. The financial services industry heavily relies on data, speed, and accuracy, but its digital infrastructure often lags behind due to outdated systems built decades ago.

The bank's Chief Information Officer, Marco Argenti, stated that Devin, the agentic AI tool, is 'like a new employee' and expected to be three or four times more productive than existing AI tools. While specific statistics on Goldman's deployment aren't published, Cognition reported that one large organization saved five to 10 percent of development time using Devin for fixing security issues in code.

Goldman expanded its agentic engineering project in 2026, adopting another platform, Anthropic's Claude, for work involving trades and transactions, as well as client vetting and onboarding. However, researchers raise concerns that redundancy and replacement are likely, with up to 200,000 jobs potentially being lost in the US banking sector alone.

Argenti emphasizes that agentic automation is a tool that frees humans for higher-value work, rather than replacing them. Nevertheless, the industry's future workforce pipeline remains uncertain.