JPMorgan poaches Nomura’s international AI strategy chief as Dimon doubles down on AI hiring

TL;DR

JPMorgan is hiring Nomura’s international AI strategy head Tahir Zafar. He joins a team already led by another Nomura alumnus.

JPMorgan Chase is hiring Nomura Holdings’ international head of artificial intelligence strategy, according to Bloomberg, as the largest US bank by assets accelerates its recruitment of AI specialists. Singapore-based Tahir Zafar, who joined Nomura in late 2023 and was promoted to his current role in March 2025, is expected to start around July after completing his gardening leave.

At JPMorgan, Zafar will report to Deep Thomas, the bank’s Asia-Pacific chief data and analytics officer, who himself moved from Nomura in August 2025 after a four-year stint. The back-to-back hires from the same Japanese bank’s AI leadership suggest JPMorgan is not simply filling positions but extracting an established team.

The hire follows comments from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon last month at the bank’s China Summit in Shanghai, where he told Bloomberg Television that JPMorgan will likely hire more AI specialists and fewer traditional bankers as the technology reshapes operations. “I think it will reduce our jobs down the road,” Dimon said, adding that the bank would retrain and redeploy employees and, in some cases, offer early retirement.

JPMorgan’s technology budget for 2026 stands at approximately $19.8 billion, with roughly $1.2 billion earmarked for AI-related investments. The bank says 150,000 of its more than 300,000 employees already use its internal large language model each week, with users reporting average time savings of four hours per day. The bank doubled its AI use cases in production in 2025.

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The pattern extends well beyond JPMorgan. Morgan Stanley recently doubled its forecast for AI-driven job losses in the European banking sector, estimating that 20% of total employment, roughly 400,000 jobs, could be eliminated by 2030. ABN Amro, HSBC, and UBS have all announced significant workforce reductions tied to automation.

The demand for AI talent on Wall Street has created its own micro-economy. Ex-bankers are charging up to $25,000 a day to train financial institutions on AI tools they have already purchased but have not yet learned to use effectively. The gap between buying AI infrastructure and deploying it productively is where much of the current hiring pressure originates.

Zafar’s move is a data point in a larger structural shift. Banks are no longer debating whether AI will change their workforce composition. They are competing over the people who can make it happen, and they are willing to raid competitors to get them. Spokespeople for both JPMorgan and Nomura declined to comment. Zafar did not respond to a request for comment.

Published June 8, 2026 - 8:47 am UTC

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