The traders at risk of being lapped in the AI race
Today was Macquarie’s Q3 results day, for the period from October to December 2025 (basically, everyone else’s Q4). While the commodities and global markets (CGM) group posted revenue that was “substantially up” on last year, there was something more worrying nestled in the accounts.
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The Australian bank noted that its higher revenue was “partially offset by higher operating expenses” driven by investments in the CGM platform. What were those investments exactly? Presumably nothing related to AI. The firm noted that it had just 20 or so active AI use cases implemented within CGM, and another 30 in the pipeline.
That is not a lot. During a call with analysts in Q3 last year, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti noted that the bank had 340 live AI use cases across the entire bank, which were busy making “meaningful gains in efficiency and productivity”.
UBS is hardly an outlier. In March 2025, the New York Post reported that JPMorgan had around 450 potential AI use cases in the works, and that the bank was expecting that number to reach 1,000 by “next year”. That is, this year.
Bank of America also noted during its investor day in November last year that it had more than “270 AI & machine learning models”, on top of its more than 1,500 AI & machine learning granted patents. Whatever number you pick, Macquarie’s offering seems a bit scant.
Macquarie’s investment bank, MacCap, also did well. The bank credited investment-related income from asset realization, as well as private credit for the success, while noting “lower fee and commission income.” It also noted its plan was to invest in “accelerating research with advanced AI tools”, without disclosing and use cases numbers.
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