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Goldman Sachs just limited who can use its strongest coding agents. Stephen Forte asks who should get those power tools in your company.
In this episode, Stephen Forte covers:
- Goldman's October change. Bloomberg (Nov 2): Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub coding tools are now for engineers. Traders and bankers lost access; the quant "strats" are exempt. Spokesperson Nick Carcaterra said that after experimenting on productivity and risk, they put the tools with those best suited to leverage them long term.
- A real shift. In July, CIO Marco Argenti had praised vibe coding by traders and bankers who built tools and handed them to one of 12,000 engineers to polish. Earlier in 2026, Goldman had already restricted Claude for Hong Kong staff over confidential data going to third-party AI tools.
- Respect the bank. Stephen will not question Goldman's call. Banking's regulatory environment is unique. Pulling coding agents back to engineers after experimentation is risk management where a bad tool can leave with client data.
- Most companies are not Goldman. Builders outside engineering should get coding agents, 100%. Tools should go first to subject matter experts, who truly understand the problem.
- IT's job. An engineer fixing accounting without understanding accounting is a mistake. IT should support subject matter experts, lift their skills and manage their code inside the company's accepted stack.
- The real risk. Neutering your most experienced people and denying them modern tools. Those people will leave for a place that will give them the tools.
- Stay inside the approved stack. Non-confidential prototyping elsewhere is usually fine. Operate inside tools the company already approved. Even Microsoft Copilot is getting better every day.
- Replit's counterpoint. CEO Amjad Masad said agents on employee laptops are a systemic security risk and the ban hammer is coming down. Control what agents can touch and where they run; don't confuse that with locking out subject matter experts.
- Juniors and judgment. Partner Chris Churchman warned heavy AI use can degrade reasoning. Stephen's view: juniors learn through structured use of AI. AI does busy work and calculations; people own judgment. A large language model cannot replace human judgment yet.
- Tokens as expenses. Garry Tan of Y Combinator spends $100K to $200K a year on tokens. Stephen's rule: no hard caps by role. A gate for everybody through management, with deliverables that show value, same as justifying a $2,000 business trip.
Sources:
- Bloomberg Law (Nov 2, 2026): https://news.bloomberglaw.com/capital-markets/goldman-restricts-traders-and-bankers-from-using-some-ai-tools
- Quartz (Nov 2, 2026): https://qz.com/goldman-sachs-restricts-ai-coding-tools-traders-bankers-110226
- CNBC, Chris Churchman (Aug 24, 2026): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/24/goldman-sachs-ai-partner-danger-skills.html
- Tech in Asia, Goldman Hong Kong Claude restriction: https://www.techinasia.com/news/goldman-sachs-restricts-ai-coding-tools-engineers
- The New Stack, Amjad Masad (Nov 3, 2026): https://thenewstack.io/ai-coding-agents-security/
- TechCrunch, Garry Tan tokens (Nov 2, 2026): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/y-combinators-garry-tan-uses-ai-agents-so-much-he-spends-up-to-200k-a-year-on-tokens/
The AI Brief from the YPO Technology Network is a daily executive briefing on the AI developments that matter to business leaders. Hosted by Stephen Forte.
