Wall Street is paying $25,000 a day for AI trainers who used to work there

Felipe Sinisterra and Dave Wang, former investment bankers, charge banks and investment funds up to $25,000 a day to train senior staff on using generative AI tools already purchased by their employers. They are booked for the next two months and have worked with clients including T. Rowe Price, Citigroup, and Bank of America. Their training focuses on practical working knowledge rather than new technology, using commercial models such as Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google’s Gemini. Demonstrations include tasks like analyzing a startup founder’s video pitch using Gemini’s video-understanding mode. Their credibility comes from prior roles at major financial institutions and fintech investment experience, including leadership in deploying and incubating AI ventures.

"Felipe Sinisterra and Dave Wang, two ex-bankers, are booked out for the next two months teaching financial institutions to actually use the AI tools they have already bought. Felipe Sinisterra and Dave Wang, two former investment bankers, are charging banks and investment funds up to $25,000 a day to teach senior staff how to use the AI tools their employers have already paid for, according to a Bloomberg feature published this week."

"What Sinisterra and Wang appear to be selling is not new technology but the working knowledge of how to use what is already installed. In demonstrations, the pair show senior bankers how to use commercial models such as Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini for tasks the bank's own staff have not yet figured out, including, in one Bloomberg-described session, analysis of a video pitch from a startup founder using Gemini's video-understanding mode."

"The credibility behind the price tag is the founders' own pre-consultant careers. Sinisterra was at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America before leading fintech investments at SoftBank, where he deployed $2bn and incubated several AI ventures. Wang was at Morgan Stanley and led crypto for SoftBank Latin America; he now sits on the Harvard Data Science Initiative's advisory board. Sinisterra runs the training business under the banner of Wall Street Prompt."

"The shape of demand is itself the story. Banks are not, on the evidence of the booking calendar, struggling with model access. They are struggling with what the McKinsey-flavoured AI strategy decks of 2023 and 2024"

Read at TNW | Artificial-Intelligence