Morgan Stanley
- Sean Manahan was named Morgan Stanley’s head of firmwide innovation in April.
- He outlines his job and how his innovation lab interacts with the rest of the bank.
- Here’s his strategy to “meet the moment” with emerging technologies after a week in Silicon Valley.
When Morgan Stanley and OpenAI announced their blockbuster partnership at the beginning of 2023, it signaled a competitive advantage for the Wall Street bank.
Morgan Stanley, since then, has co-developed a handful of generative AI tools with the AI powerhouse for its lucrative wealth-management business. Morgan Stanley is far from the only financial firm using OpenAI. However, the strategic partnership has afforded the bank early access to OpenAI’s new products and the ability to test and customize them in the bank’s innovation lab, which spans some 18,000 square feet in the bank’s 1 New York Plaza office in Manhattan.
The spark for the partnership can be traced back to 2021 when a team at Morgan Stanley responsible for scouting tech vendors met with an up-and-coming research nonprofit to evaluate its applicability in the financial services industry.