Good morning. Goldman Sachs is betting big on using AI to fundamentally rethink how the company operates.
At the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference on Tuesday, CFO Denis Coleman discussed the company’s recently announced OneGS 3.0 initiative—a multiyear overhaul of its OneGS program aimed at integrating AI throughout the bank’s operating model to reduce complexity and boost productivity. The effort is a top priority and will involve every division and function across the company, from business lines to control functions to engineering, Coleman said. “At its core, it’s an effort to drive more scale and more growth,” he said.
Goldman Sachs (No. 32 on the Fortune 500) is emphasizing the quality, availability, accuracy, and timeliness of data that underpins all of its AI initiatives, Coleman noted. That focus includes ensuring the company invests properly in shared platforms that span the organization.
“We’re asking all of our people to rethink the human processes they go through,” Coleman said. “And then we’re making investments in AI and agentic AI to accelerate change across these processes and platforms.”
They have identified six discrete workstreams, created dedicated teams, and tasked them with reviewing key activities, analyzing pain points, and identifying opportunities for efficiency, he said. Each group will then present formal investment cases for leadership review.
“We’ll fund some of those investments and hold teams accountable for the productivity outcomes that follow,” Coleman said. “This is a fundamental rethinking of how we expect our people to operate at Goldman Sachs.”
He added, “We don’t want to simply add more manual processes to drive growth. We need to convert some of that effort into digitized and automated systems—and rethink how those engines work.” Coleman expressed optimism that the OneGS 3.0 strategy will help fuel the firm’s continued growth.
‘The bar for talent remains high’
During the discussion, Coleman also addressed the talent environment, a key concern for many CFOs. “We continue to see incredible demands for people who want to come and work at Goldman Sachs, more than a million people asking to move in laterally to the firm,” Coleman said. “We can accommodate far less than 1%, so we’re still in a position to be extremely selective on the people that we hire.”
Goldman Sachs reduced headcount earlier in 2025 as part of its annual performance review process, which typically targets the lowest 3% to 5% of performers. The company moved that process up to the second quarter from its usual September timing. Despite those cuts, Goldman still expects a net increase in headcount by the end of 2025, supported by hiring in key growth areas.
“The bar for talent remains very high,” Coleman said. “We continue to operate as a pay-for-performance organization. Our goal is to pay competitively—especially for our very best people in each domain—and we are laser-focused on that.”
He added, “As long as markets stay buoyant and the outlook remains optimistic, maintaining that focus will be critical.”
Regarding the U.S. economic outlook, Coleman described it as “resilient and conducive to business.” He added, “We obviously have a Fed decision coming up. Our economists expect a 25-basis-point cut, likely followed by a pause at the beginning of 2026, and then possibly two more cuts.” Coleman also noted that 2025 is shaping up to be the second-biggest year in history for announced mergers and acquisitions industrywide.
Kathryn A. Mikells, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Exxon Mobil (No. 8), will retire effective Feb. 1, 2026. Mikells, who has undergone several procedures to address a debilitating but non-life-threatening health issue, is stepping down to focus on her recovery, according to an SEC filing.
Mikells is among the CFOs represented on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list for 2025. She joined Exxon Mobil in 2021. Mikells is the company’s first official CFO; before her appointment, the finance duties were shared across a range of executive roles. Mikells is the first woman to join the management committee of Exxon.
On Dec. 8, ExxonMobil named Neil A. Hansen, 51, as her successor. Hansen has served as president of Exxon Mobil Global Business Solutions since May 2025 and previously held senior roles in Energy Products, Europe, Africa and Middle East Fuels, and in the company’s controllers, audit, treasury, and investor relations departments, including vice president of investor relations and corporate secretary.
Like other executive officers of the corporation, Hansen will not have an employment contract. His annual salary will be $1.02 million, and he remains eligible for performance-based bonuses and long-term equity incentives.
Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
More notable moves
Jeff Chesnut was appointed CFO of Conestoga Energy, a provider of low-carbon intensity, effective immediately. With over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, capital markets, and finance, Chesnut will play a pivotal role in executing Conestoga’s growth strategy. Prior to joining Conestoga, Chesnut served as SVP of treasury, investor relations and corporate development at Upbound Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: UPBD). Before that, he served as EVP and CFO at publicly listed Loyalty Ventures Inc., which was a spinoff from publicly listed Alliance Data Systems, Inc. (now Bread Financial), where he spent over a decade.
James Robert “Rob” Foster was promoted to SVP of finance and CFO of ATI Inc. (NYSE: ATI), effective Jan. 1. Foster succeeds Don Newman, who will serve as strategic advisor to the CEO beginning Jan. 1. As previously announced, Newman will retire on March 1, 2026, and serve in an advisory capacity. Foster, a longtime ATI leader, most recently served as president of ATI’s specialty alloys and components business. He previously served as ATI’s VP of finance, supply chain and capital projects, overseeing the company’s global finance organization, capital deployment processes, and enterprise supply chain performance. Earlier, he led finance for both ATI’s operating segments and the forged products business.
Big Deal
The 11th annual Women in the Workplace report, released by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org, examines the state of women in corporate America and Canada. This year, only half of companies are prioritizing women’s career advancement—a continuation of a multiyear decline in commitment to gender diversity. For the first time, women are less interested than men in being promoted.
One of the key findings is that sponsorship matters. “Women overall are less likely than men to have a sponsor—and entry-level women stand out for receiving far less sponsorship than any other group of women or men,” according to the report. “Even when entry-level women do have a sponsor, they’re promoted at a lower rate than men. Sponsors have a substantial impact on career outcomes: in the past two years, employees with sponsors have been promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without.”
Courtesy of LeanIn.Org and McKinsey. From the report, Women in the Workplace.
Going deeper
“When Employees Feel Slighted, They Work Less” is a new report in Wharton’s business journal. New research from Wharton’s Peter Cappelli reveals how even the slightest mistreatment at work can result in lost productivity. Emphasizing respect can help companies mitigate productivity loss, according to the research.
Overheard
“I think in the next five years, you’re going to see large sections of factory work replaced by robots—and part of the reason for that is that these physical AI robots can be reprogrammed into different tasks.”
When businesses decide to engage with crypto, they quickly discover the landscape is fragmented across numerous blockchains. If they want to move assets between different chains, they must often rely on a technology called bridging that can prove insecure and expensive. Philipp Zentner, cofounder and CEO of LI.FI, created his company to address these issues. The startup provides businesses with price comparisons of exchange rates and bridging fees. It also aims to find businesses the most efficient and cost-effective pathway for each transaction.
On Thursday, LI.FI announced that it raised $29 million in funding led by Multicoin and CoinFund, bringing the total capital to about $52 million. Zentner did not disclose the company’s valuation.
“You can think of us like a combination of Google Flights and Google Maps,” he said in an interview with Fortune. “[We’re] a competitive price comparison and transaction pathfinding for businesses in crypto finance.”
The businesses that LI.FI partners with are fintechs, brokerage apps, trading desks, wallets, and neobanks. The startup has more than 800 partners, including Robinhood, Binance, and Kraken. The company says that its value proposition is that its service allows companies to go to market faster and saves them time on research, integration, and maintenance.
Zentner says that LI.FI is profitable and generates revenue through transaction fees, though he declined to disclose specific revenue numbers. It has $8 billion in monthly transaction volume as of October, which is about seven times more than its monthly volume from a year prior. The company has more than 100 employees.
“As crypto trading becomes a core feature inside mainstream fintech apps, the hardest problem is…making fragmented blockchains, liquidity, and execution work seamlessly together,” said Spencer Applebaum, investment partner at Multicoin Capital, in a statement. “LI.FI Protocol gives fintechs and web3 wallets a single API to offer both trading and cross-chain asset movement, handling on-chain routing and execution behind the scenes.”
With the new funding, LI.FI plans to expand into different transaction domains, including perpetual futures, yield opportunities, prediction markets, and lending markets. Zentner says with the new capital he also aims to hire more employees.
Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.
Self-driving Waymo taxis have gone viral for negative reasons involving the death of a beloved San Francisco bodega cat and pulling an illegal U-turn in front of police who were unable to issue a ticket to a nonexistent driver.
But this week, the self-driving taxis are the bearer of happier news after a San Francisco woman gave birth in a Waymo.
The mother was on her way to the University of California, San Francisco medical center Monday when she delivered inside the robotaxi, said a Waymo spokesperson in a statement Wednesday. The company said its rider support team detected “unusual activity” inside the vehicle and called to check on the rider as well as alert 911.
Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, declined to elaborate on how the vehicle knew something was amiss.
The company has said it has cameras and microphones inside as well as outside the cars.
The taxi and its passengers arrived safely at the hospital ahead of emergency services. Jess Berthold, a UCSF spokesperson, confirmed the mother and child were brought to the hospital. She said the mother was not available for interviews.
Waymo said the vehicle was taken out of service for cleaning after the ride. While still rare, this was not the first baby delivered in one of its taxis, the company said.
“We’re proud to be a trusted ride for moments big and small, serving riders from just seconds old to many years young,” the company said.
The driverless taxis have surged in popularity even as they court higher scrutiny. Riders can take them on freeways and interstates around San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
In September, a Waymo pulled a U-turn in front of a sign telling drivers not to do that, and social media users dumped on the San Bruno Police because state law prohibited officers from ticketing the car. In October, a popular tabby cat named Kit Kat known to pad around its Mission District neighborhood was crushed to death by a Waymo.
“If I had a million dollars… I’d be rich,” the Barenaked Ladies sang in their hit 1988 song.
At the time, a million dollars felt like a lot. But as inflation and tariffs have made essentially everything more expensive, that amount of money doesn’t feel like all that much at all. In fact, Americans now think it takes an average of $2.3 million to be considered wealthy, according to a Charles Schwabreport.
The financial services firm surveyed 2,200 adults between the ages of 21 to 75 from April 24 to May 23, so a variety of generations offered their input. The average response for what it takes to be considered “financially comfortable” was $839,000.
While the reported $2.3 million was a slight drop from last year’s Modern Wealth Survey at $2.5 million, it’s still 21% higher than the 2021 figure of $1.9 million.
Respondents also reported the bar to achieve monetary wealth feels as if it’s increasing, and 63% said it feels like it takes more money to be wealthy today compared to last year, citing the impacts of inflation, a worsening economy, and higher taxes.
Brad Clark, founder and CEO of financial advisory firm Solomon Financial, said these sentiments are relatively reflective of what he hears from his clients. There are a large number of millionaires in the U.S. when you factor in all assets, he told Fortune, but this typically includes their home, meaning their investable assets are typically less than $1 million.
“With so many middle-class Americans being considered millionaires, it stands to reason that the average individual would consider $2.3 million to be wealthy, as it may seem out of reach,” Clark said.
But experts said being considered wealthy doesn’t necessarily equate being opulent in all life choices.
The $2.3 million figure is “not luxury for everyone, but security. It’s wanting to have a house, retire well, have family, and have one’s time,” William “Bill” London, a lawyer and partner at Kimura London & White LLP who routinely handles high-net-worth families and individuals in divorces and estate cases, told Fortune. “Affluence is not about excess, but about reducing anxiety.”
What it means to be wealthy for different generations
The Charles Schwab survey showed when compared with other generations, Gen Z tends to set lower thresholds for what it takes to be wealthy and financially comfortable—$1.7 million and $329,000, respectively. Meanwhile, millennials and Gen Xers say it takes $2.1 million to be wealthy, and $2.8 million for baby boomers.
That may have to do with how exactly different generations define wealth. Earlier generations like baby boomers more frequently frame wealth in terms of security, London said, with a focus on property, pension, and assets that get passed down. Younger generations, on the other hand, more frequently consider experiences, freedom from debt, and lifestyle decisions, he added.
“More of my younger clients are more concerned about breathing space and time than they are about a big house or pricey assets,” London said. “Their definition of wealth is more about lifestyle than about acquisition.”
But it could also be the fact younger generations have a harder time acquiring large assets like a home due to comparatively high mortgage rates and home prices.
“Millennials and Gen Z are justifiably pessimistic about the prospects of home ownership, which historically was the most common way for Americans to build wealth,” Markus Schneider, associate professor and chair of the economics department at University of Denver, told Fortune. “There are lots of reasons why millennials and Gen Z may feel less secure about the world than the boomers did when they were the same age, and that may also impact how they feel about their wealth.”
Despite the differences among generations, experts agree it takes more than money to feel wealthy—and it shows in the Charles Schwab report. Some of the most popular personal definitions of wealth include happiness, physical health, mental health, quality of relationships, accomplishments, amount of free time, and material possessions.
“You don’t have to look too far to find a study that shows how depressed ultra-wealthy people often are. If you are defining wealth solely based on dollars, you likely will be disappointed when you achieve the number,” Clark said. “True wealth is being able to use your assets to free up your time to benefit those around you. The happiest people tend to be those with a greater purpose in life.”
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on July 10, 2025.
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