Dive Brief:

• JPMorgan Chase has hired Lori Beer as Global CIO and member of the Operating Committee, the company announced Thursday. Beer was promoted from CIO of the company's Corporate and Investment bank, and with her new role is taking on a $9.5 billion technology budget with 40,000 employees around the world, according to The Wall Street Journal.

• Previous CIO Dana Deasy, who is set to retire, overhauled JPMorgan's global technology, making the recent switch to Agile software development and moving the company onto the public cloud for the first time this March, the WSJ reports.

• Moving forward, the company's technology organization will be especially focusing on innovations in machine learning and robotics, according to COO Matt Zames' letter to shareholders this April. JPMorgan will also continue heavy investment in cybersecurity.

Dive Insight:

JPMorgan Chase's technology budget exceeds $9.5 billion, and the company remains committed to exploring modern tech to maximize business processes. Beer will have responsibility for a massive global technology organization that has already extended its reach into software, robotics, Big Data, blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Machine learning and robotics may seem to be nontraditional technology for the financial services sector, but the reach of both technologies is steadily expanding.

Machine learning is now applied in the airline, hospitality, ride-sharing and cloud computing industries, among others. The AI technology processes information differently than humans' "rational decision making pathways," offering users unique insight which human analysts may not be able to provide.

Robotics has found a home at JPMorgan in virtual bots, according to Zames. Last year, the company put in place a pipeline of bots to automate services like systems access administration, which the company predicts will see 1.7 million automated requests in 2017.

Cybersecurity will remain a large focus for Beer. JPMorgan was victim to a massive data breach in 2014, and the personal information of 76 million households was compromised. To strengthen its security measures in response, last year the company allocated $600 million to cybersecurity spending and announced plans to work together with seven other major banks to fight financial-services cybercrime.