Grok wants Wall Street

Attention finance bros! If you’re tired of the 2am Excel models and want a change of pace, look no further: xAI is hiring.

Elon Musk’s AI startup is recruiting market experts, from investment bankers to portfolio managers to crypto analysts, as it looks to strengthen the financial intelligence behind its AI chatbot, Grok. While Grok will be trained on a plethora of financial topics, a key focus is on credit markets, given growing concerns about corporate leverage and risks in the private credit space.

What does this mean for xAI?

The hiring push comes as xAI works to reposition itself following several recent challenges, including global scrutiny earlier this year after Grok generated nonconsensual sexualized images.

Improving Grok’s financial capabilities could strengthen xAI’s core product, diversify revenue streams, and allow it to better compete in the increasingly crowded AI landscape. But while the idea makes sense, xAI may be late to the party:

• OpenAI: In October, the company hired 100 former bankers to help train ChatGPT on financial tasks like modeling IPOs and restructurings. The effort is already translating into products: Just this month, the company launched ChatGPT for Excel and added integrations with major financial data providers, allowing users to work directly with market data inside the platform.
• Anthropic: The firm launched Claude AI tools for financial services in July and has continued expanding them as adoption grows. Last month it released Claude 4.6, a model designed to carry out financial research and analysis.

What does this mean for Wall Street?

Today’s development is somewhat paradoxical: bankers are helping train the very AI systems that could eventually replace them. To make matters worse, banks are also building internal AI tools in partnership with these same companies:

• Goldman Sachs: The firm is allocating $6 billion to technology spend this year, working with Anthropic to develop internal agents designed to automate tasks across the firm, particularly in areas like accounting and compliance.
• JPMorgan: With an annual $18 billion technology budget, the bank has already invested roughly $2 billion into AI initiatives. Its projects include tools such as ProxyIQ, its AI proxy advisor, as well as over 100 additional AI tools currently in development.
• Bank of America: The bank spent around $13 billion on technology in 2025 and plans to increase that spending by 10% this year. Its virtual assistant Erica has become a core tool, handling about 2 million customer interactions in a single day, while over 90% of employees use it internally.
• Morgan Stanley: The firm moved into the space early, through a partnership with OpenAI in 2024, and now 72% of the company's interns report using ChatGPT daily or several times per week. It's also built an internal AI toolkit for everything from data analysis to lead distributions.

AI is moving in on Wall Street's turf, and at this rate, the next analyst class might be just a line of code.—SY