JPMorgan Names Halamish as COO to Accelerate AI Implementation
Guy Halamish, who has spent more than 20+ years at JPMorgan, steps into this role with a focus on maximising the impact of AI.
JPMorgan Chase has named Guy Halamish as the Chief Operating Officer of its commercial and investment bank (CIB), tasking him with leading the division’s data and artificial intelligence strategy. The appointment was confirmed via an internal memo signed by CIB co-heads Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh.
Halamish, who has spent more than 20+ years at JPMorgan, steps into a role explicitly framed around “maximizing the impact of AI” and “harnessing the power of our data,” according to the memo.
Rather than a traditional COO remit focused purely on processes and costs, his remit is to knit together data, analytics, and AI strategy across businesses that collectively generated roughly half of the firm’s net income last year. He will work directly with the leaders of JPMorgan’s four major CIB divisions.
At the core of this reorganization is a new data operating model. Each major CIB business including global banking, markets, payments, and securities services will have its own chief data and analytics officer who reports jointly to Halamish and the respective business head.
A dual-reporting structure designed to ensure AI strategy stays tightly connected to day-to-day operations rather than siloed within a separate technology function. Those leaders will own the end-to-end lifecycle of data and AI in their segment, from improving data quality and strengthening governance, to building shared platforms and delivering production use cases.
The bank recently hired Zachery Anderson as Chief Data and Analytics Officer for its payments division, bringing him over from UK-based lender NatWest after nearly six years. Anderson has publicly stated his ambition to push the "edge of the possible with AI," exemplifying the aggressive talent acquisition strategy JPMorgan is pursuing.
Focus Areas and Priorities
The memo makes it clear that the newly formed team will be responsible for a wide-ranging agenda. Developing the bank’s data and analytics strategy, improving data quality and governance, building platforms to extract value from firmwide data assets, and preparing the bank’s infrastructure for more advanced AI and the expanded use of AI agents.
Specific transformation targets include credit processing and client onboarding, areas where AI promises to dramatically reduce friction and processing time while improving accuracy.
The move builds on JPMorgan’s existing data organization, which has been expanding under Chief Data & Analytics Officer Teresa Heitsenrether since 2023 as part of a broader modernization push. The appointment of Halamish adds a direct operational layer to that work, with a sharper focus on speed and cross-divisional coordination.
The appointment comes amid an industry-wide rush to deploy artificial intelligence across financial services. Banks and financial institutions across Wall Street are making significant investments in AI technology, with mounting pressure to modernize quickly and deliver tangible results.
The commercial and investment bank represents a massive profit engine for JPMorgan, generating $25 billion in net income out of the firm's total $58.5 billion in 2024, according to the bank's annual report. With a technology budget of $18 billion for 2025, the division's AI transformation is particularly significant for the institution's overall performance and competitive positioning.
The bank's proprietary generative AI platform, LLM Suite, went from zero to 200,000 onboarded users within just eight months of its 2024 launch, driven largely by employee demand, through what the bank describes as "healthy competition, driving viral adoption."
Described internally as "a research analyst that can offer information, solutions, and advice on a topic," the platform acts as an abstraction layer through which large language models such as OpenAI's GPT-4 are swapped in and out, with the bank deliberately avoiding lock-in to any single model provider. Employees across legal, banking, payments, and asset management use it for contract analysis, content generation, document summarization, and idea generation.
With Halamish now tasked with scaling this infrastructure further across the CIB, the platform is expected to move from a productivity tool to a core operational system across some of the bank's most complex and high-value business lines.
CEO Jamie Dimon has been particularly vocal about defending this level of spending, declaring on a recent earnings call saying, "We are going to stay out front, so help us God."