Goldman Sachs President & COO John Waldron: Rooting for the English Majors
In a Nutshell
Goldman Sachs President John Waldron sees AI as a productivity boom that will drive wealth accumulation and economic growth rather than job destruction. Private credit is fundamentally a lending business requiring diversification and strong underwriting standards, while physical AI demands massive infrastructure investment in energy and data centers. The most valuable skillset combines intellectual curiosity and analytical thinking—rooting for English, history, and philosophy majors—over narrow technical expertise alone.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Christine Anderson, Global Head of Corporate Affairs, introduces the episode lineup including a conversation with Amit Dixit on Asia private equity, the Economic Weather Report with Winfield Sickles, and a main interview with Goldman Sachs President and COO John Waldron.
Blackstone hosted an event for institutional investors representing $39 trillion in assets. Amit Dixit, Blackstone's Head of Asia Private Equity with nearly two decades at the firm, presented on shifts in Asia creating massive investment opportunities.
Amit Dixit identifies three big disruptions in Asia: physical AI, energy security, and defense/drones. Physical AI represents a central theme because Asia produces 97% of humanoid robots and supplies 80% of the bill of materials for any robotic application globally. The total data center capacity in India is about one gigawatt, which is less than the city of Phoenix or Chicago. India has 850 million people below 35 years of age and is the number one country in the world for Instagram and WhatsApp usage.
Blackstone owns the largest data center company, AirTrunk. The data center buildout is starting in India and is already advanced in developed Asia like Australia, but remains underpenetrated given the massive potential. Autonomous vehicles, drones, and data centers all require physical components that come from Asia.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have prompted governments to recognize that drones, which are relatively cheap, are highly effective. Governments are choosing between purchasing an aircraft for $50 million or a thousand drones for $50,000. This dynamic is playing out across India, Japan, Korea, and throughout Asia. Defense has been underinvested, creating significant government investment opportunities.
The Federal Reserve hiked rates by 25 basis points, which was well-priced into the market. The meeting was notable because Kevin Warsh appeared confident at the podium and the decision was unanimous at 12 to 0. The Fed characterized higher rates around stronger growth and competition for capital, stemming from the CapEx cycle. This represents a different situation than the 1990s where growth was strong enough to hike rates while maintaining buoyant financial conditions and healthy equity and capital markets.
A year ago, there was weakness in hotel assets, leisure assets, and theme park assets around the low-income consumer. The most recent retail sales print was positive, showing spending is broadening out from high-income consumers to low-income consumers. Portfolio data shows broad-based spending across all segments.
The interconnectivity between trends shows strength in revenues and earnings leading to more CapEx, which leads to more hiring. At QTS, the data center company, there were 13,000 people on site at the beginning of 2025, 40,000 at the end of the year, and projected to reach 70,000 next year. These high-paying, blue-collar jobs feed back into the consumer economy, creating a positive, self-reinforcing flywheel.
John Waldron joined Goldman Sachs 26 years ago and serves as President, Chief Operating Officer, and Board member. He has worked with David Solomon for more than 30 years, helping steer the firm through a successful and transformational period.
Waldron's favorite restaurant is Marea. For an unscheduled day, he would ski with his kids. His productivity hack focuses on sleep through natural supplements, drinking water, and avoiding alcohol while traveling. The most enduring lessons from his parents are humility and being a good listener. The lessons he imparts to his kids are humility, kindness, and being a good friend capable of creating real friendships.
Waldron pays attention to cyber risk, positioning it at the top of the risk list rather than in the middle or bottom. He notes that everyone lists cyber as a risk, but he is trying to elevate its priority.
Colleagues and industry contacts consistently report that Waldron is trusted, liked, and that people want to do business with him. He attributes this to personally seeing the benefits of gaining people's trust and treating it with care. In a world where information travels quickly, being someone who people believe will keep information confidential has helped him figure out how to help others and be more valuable to them.
Waldron and David Solomon split up approximately 1,000 client meetings a year. Clients are currently off-balance with both optimism and pessimism, operating in a period of fear and uncertainty about the future. Geopolitical crises are creating concerns about potential World War III scenarios, though this remains low probability. Companies must navigate geopolitical risk while also dealing with the advent of generative AI, which holds both enormous promise and tremendous risk.
When ranked, the top questions clients ask are: how Goldman Sachs is deploying AI, followed by inflation, followed by geopolitics. They also inquire about whether the market is in a bubble, financing, and capital spend, but the underlying question is about AI deployment effectiveness, returns on investment, and token spend.
Goldman Sachs has two main businesses: Global Banking and Markets representing about 75% of the firm, and Asset and Wealth Management representing about 25% of the firm. The private wealth business serves the wealthiest people globally, large family offices, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, while also offering solutions for high-net-worth and mass-affluent segments.
Household wealth in America is at approximately $80 trillion, close to 10 times household income. This creates both opportunities and challenges, including societal and political issues. In the optimistic AI scenario, a productivity boom will accelerate wealth accumulation. Waldron believes AI will generate productivity gains rather than a big job destruction wave.
Waldron has strong views that private credit is a great asset class that has existed long before it was labeled as such. Both Blackstone and Goldman Sachs have been doing this business for a long time. Lending is a fundamental business, and private credit is fundamentally a lending business. The key requirements are diversification, good standards, good underwriting standards, and good documentation. Investors should understand that private credit instruments are fundamentally private and not particularly liquid, deserving a place in asset allocation based on wealth picture and risk appetite. They should be considered part of the private bucket, not the liquid bucket.
At Goldman Sachs, the firm did not enter 2026 expecting significant productivity gains. Instead, they entered with a learning mindset to understand what works, what is expensive versus less expensive, and which models work for which purposes. Real productivity unlock is expected in 2027. Waldron is experiencing capacity gains in preparation time, with shorter preparation needed to brief for meetings.
Blackstone has seen a nine times monthly increase in token spend. The real economic impact of AI is just beginning to show across portfolios and the broader economy.
Both firms were part of the $500 billion NVIDIA consortium. Waldron's premise is that supply and demand dynamics show more demand than supply currently. The $500 billion NVIDIA initiative is not necessarily the tipping point for oversupply. NVIDIA is developing a new model for financing compute, similar to auto loans or mortgage securitization. Goldman Sachs and Blackstone can afford to buy compute, but not every enterprise can, making innovative financing structures necessary. The challenge is doing this responsibly without excess leverage or poor protections.
Physical AI is a real phenomenon requiring formidable infrastructure build including energy and power. Increasingly, autonomy is needed to efficiently build large infrastructure sites like data centers. There will be tremendous innovation and investment around physical AI, with extraordinary speed of technology advancement in model improvements.
China is focused more on deployment, efficiency, and productivity than the race to AGI. Their mission is to make high quality at low price. Waldron observes two Chinas: a domestic economy that would be considered unacceptable in America, and an innovation economy resembling Silicon Valley or Cambridge, Massachusetts. They run both simultaneously. The question is what impact China becoming the low-cost winner in the innovation economy will have globally.
Goldman Sachs is examining how recruitment changes in an AI world. The thesis emphasizes thinking, analytical problem solving, and intellectual curiosity as core skills returning to prominence, along with mathematical skills. The blend of skills is now important. Waldron is "rooting for the English majors, and the history majors, and the philosophy majors." The firm has historically hired liberal arts graduates who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and a desire to learn. The focus is on well-roundedness and evidence of an intellectual journey.
Waldron was not initially hired by Goldman Sachs because he was not sufficiently mathematical with enough accounting. He failed the financial modeling test. He went to Bear Stearns instead, where a second-year analyst mentor taught him how to do a financial model.
The concept of "toil" refers to lower-grade grunt work that traditionally provided learning through osmosis by working adjacent to senior people. The best learning comes from sitting in meetings with senior people discussing client questions and meeting strategies, rather than building models. Waldron's child observed that he is physically present but not mentally present.
John Waldron shared an emotional response to feedback from his children about his demanding work schedule. He described it as feeling like a "dagger" because the criticism was accurate. With ten children between the two of them, he acknowledged that significant job responsibilities create ongoing tension. He travels constantly and tries to be fully present at home on weekends, recognizing that weekday time is limited by necessity. He reflected that in high-pressure roles, the central question becomes "what's it all for" if not to be present with family.
Waldron identified as a "huge Eisenhower fan" and cited the former president's leadership quote that guides him: "it's the art of getting someone to do something you want them to do because they want to do it." He applies this principle extensively in his role, focusing on helping people recognize that certain actions serve both their interests and the right thing to do. He described Eisenhower's "superpower" as having the emotional intelligence to navigate getting people to undertake tasks they initially might not have wanted to do.
Joe, who has known John Waldron for nearly 25 years since meeting when Waldron was a young partner covering financial sponsors in Europe, provided personal insights. He noted that Waldron excels at virtually every sport including tennis, golf, and bowling, which creates a competitive disadvantage in their relationship.
Joe, as Global Head of Private Equity Strategies at Blackstone, offered his perspective on Waldron's constructive view of IPO growth. He emphasized that markets seek "good, larger, market-leading, market-defining companies that are diversified." He cited specific examples including Medline and Jersey Mike's as category-defining businesses that could eventually come to market, with Copeland mentioned as a potential future candidate. Joe stressed that public markets serve as important liquidity sources for private equity and expressed confidence that markets would open as they have, with pickup activity already visible.
The discussion addressed how AI might change hiring practices, potentially favoring liberal arts students. Joe, who was a finance major with a government minor from Georgetown, discussed AI's impact on talent within financial services. He argued that AI doesn't fundamentally change the industry, drawing from his experience as a 35-year-old analyst at Morgan Stanley. While his original job involved photocopying pages and hole-punching between midnight and 3 AM, today's analysts contribute more meaningfully to investment decisions. He noted that despite technological changes, there are now far more analysts at both Morgan Stanley and Blackstone than in previous decades.
Joe addressed the challenge of balancing family and professional demands that Waldron discussed. He shared advice he gives to younger colleagues: "you have to be successful outside of work if you wanna be successful inside of work." This includes being a successful partner, parent, and friend. He noted that Waldron appears to have found this balance and that achieving success across all life domains enables professional achievement.
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