OpenAI hires Wall Street bankers for AI training

Educators need to meet the challenge to provide young people with a set of skills that respond to the very real threat of AI

OpenAI hiring >100 ex-Wall Street bankers to train AI models (under a project called “Project Mercury”) to build financial models, valuations, IPOs, restructurings and the like. This is not shocking, but definitely a sign of what’s next. As someone in IR & finance, I see this less as a headline and more as a turning point. The lines between traditional finance skills and AI-driven capabilities are blurring faster than we expected. I have always believed that financial modelling is as much about judgment and storytelling as it is about numbers. If AI can handle the mechanics, human can focus on the interpretation, the “why it matters” part. But it also means no one can stay still. This is the time to up-skill, adapt, and stay curious, not because jobs will disappear overnight, but because the definition of value is shifting. For finance professionals, this could be a real roller-coaster: new roles, new expectations, new opportunities. Introducing artificial intelligence to such a tightly regulated industry could lay the groundwork for its adoption in fields like legal, accounting, and healthcare which should be no surprise. #Finance #InvestorRelations #AI #FutureOfWork #Leadership #Upskilling #Change

OpenAI is moving to automate parts of investment banking - hiring former JPM, MS, and GS bankers at around $150 per hour to build prompts for financial modelling and pitch-deck generation. This initiative is all apart of Sam Altman’s broader push to expand ChatGPT’s enterprise capabilities. But how might this affect investment-banking hiring? Typically these responsibilities will often fall to analysts on the team if those functions become semi-automated, banks may begin hiring fewer analysts, instead prioritising those who can interpret AI outputs, develop client relationships and demonstrate strong soft skills. Tip - make yourselves indispensable, analysts who combine technical know-how with emotional intelligence and adaptability will stand out. https://lnkd.in/gGmNWc7Z

I think this is inevitable and will ultimately help in making junior banker lives better. Junior bankers should know how to do the work without Al help, but should be able to leverage these tools whenever possible so they can save time and focus on more analytical aspects of the job. Big banks have always had internal tech teams working on tools to automate cumbersome tasks (10 years ago for example, I had excel plugins to auto-format slides and hyperlink between excel / ppt). This is just another wave of technological innovation that will help the industry as a whole. Junior bankers won't be fully automated out of jobs, they'll just be more efficient.

the foundations for a profound impact of AI in banking are being built now. Banks would do well to think about how to face this future - today

Long coming! Base level financial analyst roles may get democratised cutting down significant operation cost for investment banks. Leaving investment banks as a pure play of relationships! Similar roles in non-financial companies may still exist to avoid dependence on just an agent/software Anyhow, financial analysis may no longer be a job, rather it could become a small part of some other more valuable job.

OpenAI's Project Mercury: The $150/Hour Investment Banker Purge OpenAI has hired 100+ ex-Goldman, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley bankers for a secret project, Mercury. They're being paid $150/hour to teach AI how to build sophisticated financial models (IPOs, M&A). The goal? Automate the soul-crushing spreadsheet work done by junior analysts. It's early days, but AI is officially coming for the "grunt work" of Wall Street. My thought: The irony of former analysts training the machine that will eventually make the traditional analyst role redundant is... peak capitalism. Your thoughts on the future of junior banking? What's your survival plan?

OpenAI hired 150 ex–bankers to train its AI how to build financial models. The project, code-named Mercury, pays participants $150/hour to create models for IPOs, restructurings, and leveraged buyouts, the exact work junior analysts spend a large number of hours a week doing. These bankers, many from JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Evercore, and KKR, are teaching OpenAI’s systems how to handle real-world finance tasks with structure. It’s part of OpenAI’s push to make its models useful across industries like finance, consulting, law, and tech, as it looks to move beyond chatbots into deep professional automation. Participants submit one model per week, receiving feedback from reviewers before it’s integrated into OpenAI’s systems. If successful, could Project Mercury eliminate hours of modeling work and change how investment banks train analysts?

Can investment banking be AI'd? With OpenAI hiring more than 100 ex-investment bankers from the likes of JPMorganChase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, KKR and students from Harvard Business School helping train its artificial intelligence on how to build financial models to replace the hours of grunt work performed by junior bankers across the industry, it would seem so... Once a specialised and prestigious career path, what will the key skills of the future be in this field if not financial modelling and the grit to push through the long hours and grunt work? Thoughts?

A significant move by OpenAI that underscores the importance of domain-specific expertise in training advanced AI models. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has hired more than 100 former investment bankers to teach its AI how to build financial models. The initiative aims to automate the complex and often tedious "grunt work" performed by junior bankers. This strategic hiring of experts from firms like Goldman Sachs indicates a clear focus on developing highly specialized, enterprise-grade AI solutions for the finance industry. It's a powerful example of combining human expertise with machine learning to tackle complex professional workflows, potentially reshaping the future of financial analysis. Source: https://lnkd.in/eSpiHnBc #ArtificialIntelligence #Finance #OpenAI #Fintech #InvestmentBanking #FutureOfWork