Inside JPMorgan's AI push - agents, concierges, upheaval
JPMorgan is wiring artificial intelligence into the core of its operations via a platform called LLM Suite, a bank-built portal that taps models from OpenAI and Anthropic, chief analytics officer Derek Waldron has told CNBC.
Updated roughly every eight weeks as the bank feeds in more data and connections to its software stack, LLM Suite is central to a plan Waldron describes as a “fully AI-connected enterprise.”
“The broad vision that we’re working towards is one where the JPMorgan Chase of the future is going to be a fully AI-connected enterprise,” Waldron said.
Waldron said the bank aims to equip every employee with a personalised AI assistant, automate back-office workflows with AI agents and deliver AI-curated client journeys.
In a CNBC demo, LLM Suite produced a credible five-page investment-banking deck for a meeting with Nvidia’s leaders in about 30 seconds – work that would previously have taken junior bankers hours.
The push comes as enthusiasm for generative AI outpaces near-term returns across corporate America.
Even with JPMorgan’s roughly 18 billion dollar annual tech spend, Waldron acknowledged that “there is a value gap between what the technology is capable of and the ability to fully capture that within an enterprise,” citing the need to connect thousands of applications into a consumable AI ecosystem.
AI dominated a July executive retreat led by CEO Jamie Dimon, where leaders discussed how changes would flow through a 317,000-strong workforce and affect apprenticeship models in banking.
One idea circulating on Wall Street is shrinking junior-to-senior ratios and distributing analysts across lower-cost cities to enable round-the-clock, AI-augmented deal work.
JPMorgan began rolling out LLM Suite in 2023 as a secure corporate ChatGPT for email drafting and document summaries.
About 250,000 employees now have access, excluding branch and call-centre staff, and roughly half use it daily, according to Waldron. The bank has entered a new phase, deploying agentic AI for multistep tasks that will “take on more and more responsibilities” as systems grow more capable and more deeply integrated.
The shift will reshape work. Some roles will sit at the centre of teams of AI agents, while others in routine operations may be displaced as automation spreads.
In May, the bank’s consumer head told investors operations staff would fall by at least 10 percent over five years as AI scales.
“In an AI world, you’ll still have people at the top who are managing and have relationships with clients, but many, many of the processes underneath are now being done by AI systems,” Waldron said.
Corporates risk falling behind if they hesitate, added Avi Gesser, a Debevoise & Plimpton partner who advises on AI.
“People are starting to see what these tools can do,” he said. “They’re sort of like, ‘Wow, if you get the workflow right, implement it properly and have the right guardrails, I could see how that would save you a lot of time and a lot of money and deliver a better product.’”