Investment Banking

Investment banking and securities dealing covers the elite tier of financial services — capital raising (IPOs, debt issuance), M&A advisory, market-making, proprietary trading, and securities underwriting. The bulge-bracket firms (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan IB, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, UBS, Barclays, Deutsche Bank) dominate the largest deals; boutique firms (Lazard, Evercore, Centerview, Houlihan Lokey, Moelis) compete in M&A advisory. Revenue is concentrated in deal-driven fees that fluctuate dramatically with market cycles. Junior-banker roles (analyst and associate) historically demanded 80-100 hour weeks producing pitch books, financial models, and research — and that's exactly the work AI is reshaping fastest. Compensation remains the highest-end of finance work, with first-year analysts at top firms making $200K+ all-in.

AI deployment in investment banking has reached the point where every major firm has a proprietary or semi-proprietary stack. JPMorgan's LLM Suite covers IB workflows alongside the broader bank. Goldman Sachs' GS AI Platform serves bankers across research, trading, and operations. AlphaSense is the dominant cross-firm research platform — used at every bulge-bracket bank for company research, transcript analysis, and competitive intelligence. Hebbia Matrix handles multi-document analysis for deal teams (data-room review, SEC filing analysis, due-diligence summarization). BlackRock Aladdin AI dominates the asset-management side that overlaps with IB activity. Bloomberg AI provides the data + drafting layer most analysts use daily. The horizontal models (ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot) are heavily used at the junior-banker level for pitch-book drafting and financial-model assistance, though firms have strict policies on confidential-information handling.

The most visible impact is on first- and second-year banker roles — the historically grueling all-nighter work of formatting pitch books, building DCF models, and producing research is being heavily automated. Headcount at the analyst tier hasn't fallen sharply yet, but per-analyst output has roughly doubled at firms aggressive on AI adoption. The middle of the pyramid (VPs and senior associates) is squeezed: AI doesn't replace senior judgment, but the sheer reduction in busywork means firms can run leaner deal teams. Senior bankers (MDs and partners) gain leverage — their relationships and judgment are what clients pay for, and AI tools amplify rather than replace that value. New roles emerging: AI infrastructure specialist (builds firm-internal LLM workflows), prompt-design lead, AI compliance officer (validates outputs for confidentiality and accuracy). The boutique firms are interestingly positioned — they can move faster on AI adoption than the bulge brackets without the weight of a 200,000-person enterprise rollout.