Goldman Sachs pulls Claude Code and GitHub from its bankers two weeks before Anthropic's $1.5 trillion IPO
Internal guidance updated in October ends months of trader and banker access to Claude Code and GitHub, after a year in which Goldman's own executives championed employee vibe coding. For Anthropic and Microsoft, seat expansion at a marquee buyer just stopped, two weeks before Anthropic's IPO pricing.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Goldman Sachs+0.23% — Goldman Sachs, up 0.23 percent today has cut most of its traders and bankers off from advanced AI coding tools. Internal guidance updated in October limits Anthropic's$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B Claude Code and Microsoft's+1.84% — Microsoft, up 1.84 percent today GitHub to engineers only, after months in which non-technical staff used them to follow client trading flows, simulate market shifts and draft text and visuals 12. Only the "strats," a group whose work blends software engineering, quantitative research and trading, kept access alongside the engineers 2. Bloomberg reported the change on November 2, roughly two weeks before Anthropic's IPO pricing 2.
The bank that preached vibe coding just revoked it
In July, Goldman chief information officer Marco Argenti praised "vibe coding" by non-technical staff: a trader builds a quick prototype with AI, then hands it to the bank's roughly 12,000-person engineering pool for polishing 23.
In August, Goldman partner Chris Churchman, who co-chairs the bank's Global Banking and Markets AI working group, warned that the spread of AI across Wall Street risks degrading the analytical abilities of the next generation of bankers 2.
By October the risk camp had prevailed, and this is the bank's second retreat this year: it earlier restricted Hong Kong staff from using Claude 2. A spokesperson called it the end of the experimentation phase, with tools going to those "best suited to leverage them for the long term" 1. The October guidance implies the bank could not yet confirm the tools paid off for non-engineers; it does not report a measured productivity verdict.
Who pays when a marquee buyer rations seats
The restriction means seat expansion at one of the most prestigious enterprise AI buyers has stopped for both Anthropic and Microsoft's GitHub business. The read-through lands two weeks before Anthropic's IPO, expected to price in November at a valuation around $1.5 trillion 4.
Anthropic's sequential revenue growth fell from 144% in Q2 to 47% in Q3
- Sequential revenue growth
- Estimate
Data
| Sequential revenue growth | |
|---|---|
| Q4 '25 | 48% |
| Q1 '26 | 132% |
| Q2 '26 | 144% |
| Q3 '26 (estimate) | 47% |
And the tape is already skeptical. Anthropic's amended prospectus shows third-quarter revenue just shy of $17 billion, up about 47% sequentially after 144% in Q2 4.
The filing cites capacity constraints, summer seasonality and price cuts as explanations, and it discloses that price reductions on new models and contractual discounts cut Q3 revenue by about $600 million 4. The same week, ServiceNow+2.92% — ServiceNow, up 2.92 percent today fell 26.9% on October 29 even after raising its AI contract target to at least $1.7 billion, on a forecast of slower backlog growth 5. Enterprise AI is no longer graded on adoption; it is graded on whether adoption pays.
What to watch
Anthropic's amended prospectus discloses customer concentration but does not break out seat-level retention, so its roadshow disclosures are the checkable test: enterprise net revenue retention and any named financial-services customer. When a bank this prestigious rations the tool after its own review, other enterprise buyers' renewal math is the next thing to price.
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