Goldman Sachs is looking to deploy an AI-driven coding tool to assist its 12,000 developers. 

The $598 billion bank is working with AI-driven startup Cognition to deploy the tool, which will be named Devin, as first reported by CNBC.

Since its inception in 2023, Cognition has raised $196 million from investors including Founders Fund and 8VC, according to Crunchbase. 

Goldman’s AI tool, Devin, can operate as a full-stack engineer, completing multistep assignments with minimal intervention, according to Cognition. 

AI for coding 

As banks, including Citi, Citizens Bank, Deutsche Bank and ING Bank, continue to deploy AI coding tools, the tech will augment rather than fully replace developers in the foreseeable future, Swaresh Subba, practice director at think tank Everest Group, told Bank Automation News.   

Subba added that AI tools cannot fully replace human coders due to the following: 

• Contextual understanding: Developers make trade-offs based on architecture, scalability and long-term maintainability — areas where human judgment still outpaces AI; 

• Problem framing: Writing code is often the last step in a much more complex process involving identifying user needs, architecting systems and integrating components; and 

• Accountability and compliance: Developers are accountable for code quality, security  and ethical implications — roles that can’t be offloaded to AI. 

AI-generated code often lacks full understanding of the business logic, security implications, and regulatory requirements, which makes it difficult to operate outside of human oversight, Subba added. 

The best use cases for AI-driven coding assistance in financial services, according to Subba, are: 

• Report generation: Automated scripting of regulatory reports (CRR and Basel IV, for example); 

• Test automation: Writing test cases for wealth management and trading platforms; and 

• Legacy migration: Refactoring old COBOL codebases into modern Java/Python. 

Gen AI at Goldman Sachs 

The New York-based investment bank has already deployed its internal gen AI assistant, GS AI Assistant, to 10,000 of its 45,000 employees. It assists employees in:  

• Translating code; 

• Proofreading emails; 

• Responding to queries; and 

• Summarizing documents. 

Goldman aims to deploy GS AI Assistant to all its employees by year end, a spokesperson previously told Bank Automation News. 

The New York-based investment bank declined to comment about its coding assistant Devin. 

Goldman reports second quarter earnings July 16.