Dive Brief:
- Goldman Sachs is rethinking innovation with the addition of Jared Cohen, CEO of Google’s tech incubator Jigsaw, who joins the investment firm in the senior role of president of global affairs, as first reported by CNBC and confirmed in a memo from the firm obtained by CIO Dive.
- The addition breaks up Goldman’s unique co-CIO arrangement, initiated in September 2019 when the company installed former AWS VP Marco Argenti as co-CIO alongside George Lee.
- The firm’s C-suite realignment places Cohen and Lee at the helm of the firm’s new applied innovation initiative and will leave Argenti as sole CIO as of October 1, according to the memo.
Dive Insight:
Cohen, a protégé of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the founder of Jigsaw, brings experience in the tech sector and in foreign policy to his new role.
He served on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff from 2006 to 2010 under Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton prior to becoming Google’s first director of ideas under Schmidt.
Goldman Sachs has baked modernization and digital transformation into the DNA of Goldman Sachs since 2017, when the firm’s storied CEO Lloyd Blankfein famously proclaimed, “We are a technology firm. We are a platform.”
Goldman tapped Visa B2B and Visa Direct Payouts solutions to modernize global money movement last year and partnered with Publicis Sapient to build a could-native treasury and cash management platform in 2020.
The Office of Applied Innovation will place Cohen and Lee at the center of the firm’s ongoing modernization efforts.
“George and Jared will specifically identify and advance commercial opportunities for the firm that are at the intersection of a changing global marketplace, shifts in the geopolitical landscape, and rapidly evolving technology,” current Goldman CEO David Solomon said in a statement.
