At America’s oldest bank, 134 new workers don’t sleep or take sick days. They don’t even have names.

They’re what BNY calls “digital employees.” They work side by side with humans. They have unique roles and are evaluated by how well they do them. Some of their jobs were done by people last year.

“The digital employee works 24/7, which is obviously very different to our human counterparts,” said Rachel Lewis, who oversees nine digital employees in addition to thousands of humans as head of payment operations for BNY. “It’s really focused on very specific repetitive tasks that allow our human employees to do much more human, intense, interesting-type roles.”

Across Wall Street, analysts and investors are starting to ask more questions about how the industry’s expenses on AI will translate into higher efficiencies and greater returns. BNY spent $3.8 billion on technology in 2025, or about 19% of its revenue. That’s the highest proportion among its large-bank peers, according to data collated by CNBC.

While the company is building more digital employees, it’s also upskilling the human ones. Shortly after ChatGPT was released in late 2022, BNY set up its AI Hub.

BNY built a platform it calls Eliza, which pulls in a variety of open-source, commercially available models that are integrated with the firm’s internal data and compliance. Almost all of BNY’s workforce has completed a 10-hour training for Eliza, and thousands more have taken it a step further through a multi-day AI bootcamp that can help non-engineers find creative ways to automate parts of their jobs.

By Leslie Picker & Ritika Shah