Good morning. The Fortune Future of Finance event convened in New York City on Thursday, and AI was certainly top of mind.
We kicked off the conference with an interesting discussion between Robert Goldstein, BlackRock's COO and senior managing director, and Fortune executive editor Lee Clifford. Put simply, AI is changing how BlackRock adds talent—and how that talent gets things done.
In fact, Goldstein told the audience, from senior Wall Street executives to leaders of the next generation of finance, AI will be “the most significant technology, innovation, evolution, revolution of my 30-year career.”
Goldstein has been the COO for more than 10 years, and his career trajectory could include the chief executive seat at the world's largest asset manager. As my Fortune colleague Paolo Confino, writes: “Goldstein has spent the entirety of his career at BlackRock, joining the firm when he was 20 years old in 1994. At the time BlackRock had around 55 employees. It has since grown to be the largest asset manager in the world with record assets under management of more than $10 trillion.”
He continued: "As BlackRock’s stature grew, so has Goldstein’s within the firm’s walls. He was named to the firm’s executive committee in 2012, and he’s now reportedly in the running to replace Larry Fink, the company’s cofounder and the only CEO it has had throughout its 36-year history."
If Goldstein succeeds in becoming CEO, it'll likely be because BlackRock succeeds in implementing AI. And, as he noted on Thursday morning, with AI models like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard so user-friendly and language based—instead of math or coding based—"you’re able to extend your problems and solutions to be more about words and language,” allowing for greater participation and greater growth.
To read the rest of Goldstein’s take on AI, please see the rest of Paolo's story here. As a co-chair of the conference, I had the opportunity to interview several CFOs about best practices in AI and also the evolving role of the finance chiefs. Stay tuned to find out what I learned.
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
