Goldman reportedly narrows AI tool access as UBS cites agents

UBS says employees run over 12,700 personal agents while Goldman reportedly limits coding tools to engineers.

Two banks, two postures

Goldman Sachs has reportedly cut most of its employees off from AI coding tools such as Claude Code, and only engineers can still use them, according to Bloomberg citing internal guidelines from October. UBS says its employees are running over 12,700 AI personal agents in their daily activities.

Goldman's stated reasons

Goldman spokesperson Nick Carcaterra pointed to a "variety of factors including productivity and risk management".

UBS counts what is live

UBS reported 608 live AI use cases in production, an 81% YoY increase, with another 1,090+ applications in development. Counts like these give the rest of us something to compare our own pipelines against.

Payments firms court the agent

Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said a broad strategic partnership with OpenAI includes the use of Agent Pay. Mastercard also said in a press release that it and Tencent's cross-border payment platform, TenPay Global, will explore new opportunities in agentic payments. Miebach said consumers need to feel comfortable before this can really take off.

Grab puts numbers on assistants

Grab CEO Anthony Tan said "merchants using our AI assistants see about 20% uplift" and that drivers using it earn over 10% more per online hour. Those are the CEO's figures from an earnings call.

What to watch in your own shop

Which AI tools does your team use today, and who decides who gets them? That question looks different at a bank that has narrowed access than at one where employees run personal agents.