JP Morgan hires ex-Google exec for AI ambitions
In the ruthless battle for tech talent, JP Morgan has poached a senior exec from Google as it looks to boost its artificial intelligence (AI) powered services.
“Building and hiring a rock star team!”
CNBC says it exclusively obtained a memo which reveals the news. To its credit, CNBC got in first and explains the bank recruited Apoorv Saxena, Google’s head of product management for cloud-based (AI). He worked at Google for six years.
However, Saxena has updated his LinkedIn profile. So… err… we all know it now. On LinkedIn, Saxena says this about his new role: “Building and hiring a rock star team!”
Whatever.
This new hire is all part of the competition between Facebook, Google’s Alphabet and many Silicon Valley start-ups to get ahead in the AI race.
In May, the bank hired Manuela Veloso, head of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, to help identify opportunities that “could potentially transform financial services” – according to a memo sent at the time.
Of course, its rivals have been active as well.
In June, Orange partnered with Google through Orange Digital Ventures (ODV), its corporate venture fund, as they looked to finance start-ups.
Their main areas of interest are not just fintech – but lie in the “fields of new connectivities”, internet of things (IoT), cybersecurity, cloud and AI.
In April, OCBC Bank rolled out its AI-powered voice banking services in collaboration with Google.
Last year, AI detractors were given a bit more ammo after Facebook had to shut down one of its programmes after it invented its own language.
