A person exits the JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters on Feb. 17, 2026, in New York City. <\/p>\n
Zamek | View Press | Corbis News | Getty Images<\/p>\n
JPMorgan Chase<\/a> plans to deploy artificial intelligence<\/a> agents later this year that can work autonomously for far longer than existing versions, marking another milestone in the corporate adoption of AI, CNBC has learned exclusively.<\/p>\n AI agents are evolving from tools that complete single tasks to digital workers that manage workflows across multiple steps and disparate\u00a0software programs, Derek Waldron<\/a>, JPMorgan chief analytics officer, told CNBC in an interview.<\/p>\n “We’ve entered now the era of long-running autonomous agents,” Waldron said. That “means that agents don’t just run for two or three minutes to carry out a goal or some instructions of a human, they can run for an hour or two.”<\/p>\n Long-running agents have already emerged<\/a> over the past year as examples including Anthropic’s<\/a> Claude Code and OpenClaw went viral<\/a>. JPMorgan’s planned deployment, however, suggests the technology is close to clearing the security and governance hurdles that have slowed adoption inside large companies.<\/p>\n JPMorgan, run by CEO Jamie Dimon<\/a> since 2006<\/a>, is the biggest U.S. bank by assets and has a nearly $20 billion annual technology budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n While much of the conversation around generative AI has focused on model intelligence, tech leaders are increasingly focused on a different question, said Waldron: How long can AI systems operate effectively before requiring human intervention?<\/p>\n That concept, which Waldron called “intellectual coherence,” has been helped by improvements in how AI models reason, enabling them to be more of a “team manager than an individual worker,” he said. <\/p>\n “Just like how people function, team managers can parse out a problem and delegate activities, and teams can run for a lot longer to do more complex things,” Waldron said.<\/p>\n Other recent advances that have helped agents do more complex jobs include the ability to write code, control web browsers and interact directly with desktop software, he said.<\/p>\n While long-running agents aren’t yet ready for corporate use because of security concerns, their arrival isn’t far off, Waldron said: “We will have those in 2026.”<\/p>\n Eventually, AI agents will remain coherent for “multiple hours, then days, then weeks,” he said. <\/p>\n ‘Diminished’ moats<\/p>\n AI-driven productivity gains have been most visible in software development and back-office type operations, but Waldron said it is increasingly boosting revenue-generating roles.<\/p>\n In private banking, for example, AI systems screen market activity, client positions and research overnight, helping bankers focus on client interactions.<\/p>\n The bank has seen a 20% increase in gross sales because of these tools, he said, and believes they could eventually allow individual bankers to expand client coverage by as much as 50%.<\/p>\n