JPMorgan Chase is betting on Seattle to build its AI control layer – GeekWire
JPMorgan Chase is building a new AI software infrastructure team, based in Seattle, focused on using AI across its data centers and external providers in a way that controls costs, protects its intellectual property, and avoids consolidating its wealth into any one vendor.
Lori Beer, the bank’s global CIO, discussed the effort as part of a broader discussion Tuesday during a stop in Seattle. He said the bank “is aware of closings, strategic risks, financial risks, all those things.”
The move comes as business and technology leaders — including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Palantir CEO Alex Karp — have publicly warned about the dangers of letting a small number of AI vendors amass control over costs, data, and options for AI tools for businesses.
Beer described the new group as an AI infrastructure group but said it works at the software level, separate from JPMorgan’s teams that build data centers or buy hardware.
He said the group will, for example, develop systems to determine when different types of AI tasks are moved to JPMorgan’s data centers, when they should go to public cloud providers, and when they are used by new specialized computing providers.
AI agents are one example of where the bank draws the line.
Beer said JPMorgan will build and own the software that powers its agents, while treating the underlying AI models as replaceable. The agent layer is specific to JPMorgan’s business, while the underlying models are general-purpose, and JPMorgan wants to be able to switch between them as the market changes.
Cost is another focus. Given the choice, Beer said, developers naturally reach for the newest and most powerful model, or the cheapest one that works. The systems developed by the new team will move certain workloads to different types of models.
The new AI infrastructure team will be spread across multiple JPMorgan locations, but Beer said the Seattle location provides a high concentration of needed skills, including engineers who built cloud infrastructure at Amazon, Microsoft, and other technology platforms before joining JPMorgan.
It’s part of a broader focus on AI at JPMorgan’s Seattle Tech Center, which has grown to about 400 people since it opened in 2018, with a strong emphasis on cybersecurity.
JPMorgan said this week it named Ture Armas, the bank’s CTO of Commercial Bank Lending Technology, to lead the Seattle Tech Center. Armas will continue in his existing role while also overseeing the agency’s strategy for technology, talent, and community engagement. He replaced Mamtha Banerjee who left in March.
The Seattle Tech Center is preparing to move next month into an expanded space at the JPMorganChase Center, a skyscraper that was renamed from the Russell Investments Center in January. The technology center is currently located in a small space in a nearby building. The move will put engineers closer to business teams, which Beer called critical as AI accelerates the pace of product development.
Beer, who began his career as a software engineer at a nuclear facility, joined JPMorgan in 2014 from health insurer WellPoint. In 2017, he became the first CIO to sit on the bank’s Executive Committee. He oversees a technology division of about 70,000 people, including 45,000 engineers, with an annual budget of $20 billion.
JPMorgan reported second-quarter results Tuesday morning, which topped Wall Street expectations. On the earnings call, CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank has nearly 1,000 AI use cases across the business, about 50 of which he described as critical, in areas including risk, fraud, marketing, note-taking, and document reading.
In what was a preview of Beer’s comments later in the day, CFO Jeremy Barnum outlined the bank’s AI priorities: “Use the right model for the right purpose, be smart with open source where it’s right, and make sure you get a profit from it in the end.”
