JPMorgan's AI agents now run for hours without human oversight
JPMorgan Chase plans to release upgraded AI agents later this year that operate autonomously for hours without human intervention. The bank has already seen a 20% increase in private banking gross sales tied to AI tools and expects the new agents to eventually allow individual bankers to expand client coverage by as much as 50%.
Derek Waldron, JPMorgan's chief analytics officer, told CNBC the bank has "entered now the era of long-running autonomous agents." He said agents can now run for an hour or two, compared to the two or three minutes typical of earlier systems.
What this means for managers
For management teams, longer-running agents reduce the need for constant human oversight. JPMorgan's private banking division uses these systems to analyze market activity, client positions, and research overnight, freeing bankers to focus on client interactions during business hours.
Waldron described the trajectory ahead: agents will eventually remain coherent for "multiple hours, then days, then weeks." Future agents will function as "team managers" rather than individual workers, delegating tasks across teams to handle more complex problems.
JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, has a nearly $20 billion annual technology budget. The company's ability to clear security and governance hurdles suggests other large enterprises may follow with their own autonomous agent deployments.
Industry adoption accelerating
Anthropic, the maker of Claude, has released AI agents for financial services and partnered with advisor networks LPL and Orion. Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs announced a joint venture with Anthropic last month to form a new AI services company.
Robinhood launched third-party AI agents that can autonomously execute equity trades and make credit card purchases for retail investors. However, the company's leadership signaled caution about broader deployment. Steve Quirk, Robinhood's chief brokerage officer, said advisors using AI agents to trade on behalf of clients "won't happen quick."
Regulatory barriers remain. Registered investment advisors currently cannot hire AI agents to manage client money under existing rules. That restriction will persist until regulations change.
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