Goldman Sachs Takes Claude Code and GitHub Away From Traders and Bankers, Ending Its Vibe-Coding Experiment Outside Engineering
Goldman Sachs has limited AI coding tools including Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub to its engineers, Bloomberg reported on November 2, citing internal guidance updated in October. Some traders had been using the tools for work such as monitoring client trading flows. A Goldman spokesperson cited 'a variety of factors including productivity and risk management' and said the experimentation phase is over.
A bank whose technology chief praised letting non-engineers build software with AI has pulled the tools back from them. Goldman Sachs has limited advanced AI coding tools, including Anthropic's Claude Code and Microsoft's GitHub, to its engineers, Bloomberg reported on November 2, citing internal guidance updated in October. For months, Goldman had let bankers use the tools, and some traders used them to speed up work such as monitoring client trading flows, Bloomberg said.
What Goldman said#
A Goldman spokesperson, Nick Carcaterra, told Bloomberg the decision reflected "a variety of factors including productivity and risk management." He said the period of experimentation is over and that the bank is now limiting the tools to the people "who are best suited to leverage them for the long term." Bloomberg said the ban has frustrated some traders.
The reversal is notable because of what Goldman's chief information officer, Marco Argenti, said in July: in an interview he praised "vibe coding" by non-technical staff, describing a trader or asset manager building a quick prototype with AI and handing it to an engineer to make it ready for production. Under the October guidance, that first step is no longer open to most staff.
Goldman is not the first large company reported to narrow internal Claude Code use, though the reasons differ. In October, The Information reported that Meta had cut its Claude Code users from about 60,000 to about 30,000 by steering staff to in-house tools. Other banks are still widening developer access: Barclays expects Claude Code to reach 50% of its developers by the end of 2026, a plan aimed at engineers rather than traders.
Limits#
- Bloomberg's report is paywalled; we read its opening and The Decoder's summary of it, and could not see the full guidance.
- Goldman has not said which risks it had in mind, whether any incident prompted the change, or how many employees lost access.
- The restriction covers coding tools; nothing reported says Goldman is cutting other AI tools for the same staff.