R. Martin Chavez

During his time at Goldman Sachs during the 2010s, R. Martin Chavez saw the potential for AI agents back when his team was developing “algorithmic trading,” he told the crowd at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in London.

Once he became CIO, Chavez set out his terms plainly: staff could either tell computers what to do, partner with those who did, or stand in the way and leave.

To the founders in the room, he shared the advice he first heard from Goldman’s head of sales: “Customers buy a product when they have unbearable pain and you have convinced them that only your software product can put an end to their pain. Everything else is just getting lucky.”