Goldman steps boldly into the future Technologically, Goldman Sachs has leapt far into the future. They’re now testing an autonomous software engineer named Devin, developed by the new startup Cognition Labs. This new plan is being touted as a game-changer for the financial behemoth. In fact, the City is currently experimenting with ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into its CitySmart development pipeline. Devin functions under the auspices of human staff. On simple engineering tasks, he’ll take care of the routine work on his own, allowing human developers to focus on bigger, more complicated builds.
Cognition Labs, now valued at almost $4 billion, had technology and investor circles buzzing last year. The company provocatively and incorrectly claimed to be the first to create the world’s first AI software engineer. Since then, the startup has lured in some high-profile investors. Among them is Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, underscoring its disruptive potential to the tech landscape. Since its launch, Cognition Labs has doubled its early-stage valuation—a positive sign of increasing faith in the talent behind its innovative tech solutions.
Devin even handles the boring tasks that engineers are afraid to tackle. It automates the often cumbersome process of rewriting internal code to stay current with evolving programming languages. Yet, the powers of this digital engineer go well beyond just patching things up. Marco Argenti, Goldman Sachs’ technology chief, said that Devin is able to tackle complicated multi-step tasks — such as creating applications in their entirety. This unique functionality makes Devin an interesting tool to help supplement Goldman Sachs’ existing developer workforce – a practical labor pool consisting of 12,000 human developers.
Argenti came to Goldman Sachs from Amazon in 2019. Safety doesn’t mean abandoning AI. He imagines a future “hybrid workforce,” in which humans and artificial intelligence complement each other. He is quick to point out that with Devin’s integration, this represents a major turning point in the industry. The move brings significant opportunity for reward.
“We’re going to start augmenting our workforce with Devin, which is going to be like our new employee who’s going to start doing stuff on the behalf of our developers.” – Marco Argenti
The advent of agentic AI, such as Devin, represents a major leap in Wall Street’s approach to software development. Argenti’s expectations are that Goldman Sachs will begin its rollout of hundreds of Devins. Based on enough varied use cases, they can stretch that number into the tens of thousands.
“Initially, we will have hundreds of Devins and that might go into the thousands, depending on the use cases.” – Marco Argenti
Devin uses reinforcement learning, an advanced training process that makes AI smarter and more effective over time. This technology allows Devin to adapt and improve its performance, making it increasingly effective in its role as an autonomous engineer.
With human developers working alongside AI, Argenti expects the relationship to change what the industry comes to expect and require from developers. He notes that engineers will need to develop skills in articulating problems clearly and transforming them into coherent prompts for AI systems. Together, this partnership will provide the creative and collaborative atmosphere that will allow technology to work in tandem with human innovation.
“It’s really about people and AIs working side-by-side.” – Marco Argenti
The introduction of autonomous engineers such as Devin on Wall Street is a game-changing technological development. This technical disruption comes with both challenges and opportunities for the future workforce. Like Goldman Sachs, Spotify and other companies are shifting to a hybrid model. They need to find a way through the complexity of embracing AI, whilst maintaining human expertise as integral to their business.