JPMorgan Chase plans to deploy more powerful AI agents this year

JPMorgan Chase plans to deploy artificial intelligence 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.

AI agents are evolving from tools that complete single tasks to digital workers that manage workflows across multiple steps and disparate software programs, Derek Waldron , JPMorgan chief analytics officer, told CNBC in an interview.

"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."

Long-running agents have already emerged over the past year as examples including Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenClaw went viral . JPMorgan's planned deployment, however, suggests the technology is close to clearing the security and governance hurdles that have slowed adoption inside large companies.

JPMorgan, run by CEO Jamie Dimon since 2006 , is the biggest U.S. bank by assets and has a nearly $20 billion annual technology budget .

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?

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.

"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.