AI Specialists Demand $25,000 Daily Fees from Wall Street Banks

Felipe Sinisterra and Dave Wang are gaining attention for their guidance to Wall Street bankers on improving their AI initiatives.

On a bright March afternoon, the highly esteemed duo in financial training addressed a venture capital fund’s employees in New York. Wang, 31, demonstrated how Google’s AI model, Gemini, could assess videos of entrepreneurs pitching their ideas.

He introduced a web application employing behavioral analysis techniques derived from the FBI to correlate transcripts with visual cues such as body language and facial expressions, assisting in pinpointing potential issues.

Sinisterra, 30, subsequently led the participants in utilizing OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude to comb through earnings call transcripts for key market-impacting statements. The AI performed sentiment analysis and transformed executives’ verbal remarks into numerical data for forecasting. Attendees experienced firsthand how AI could alleviate the more labor-intensive aspects of their jobs.

Read: Wall Street prepares for a looming AI bubble amid speculation on its collapse

The price for attending this session? $25,000. They are currently facing a two-month waitlist.

“We’re witnessing a shift where companies see AI as a competitive edge, a proactive instrument,” Sinisterra remarked. “In the future, it will be regarded as a fundamental necessity.”

As concerns about AI increase, major banks are eager to recruit more AI specialists while scaling back traditional banking roles. Standard Chartered Plc aims to cut thousands of support positions over the next four years. Citigroup Inc, Wells Fargo & Co, and Bank of America Corp collectively laid off over 5,000 workers in the first quarter of 2026, even while posting record profits.

Senior executives are willing to invest heavily in advanced AI technology, igniting efforts to embed these tools across their organizations.

Sinisterra and Wang, who previously served as fund managers at SoftBank, are instilling assurance and expertise in firms keen on transformation.

Established in July 2025, Wall Street Prompt has partnered with T. Rowe Price Group Inc, Citigroup, and Bank of America, according to sources.

T. Rowe Price enlisted the duo to educate its investment personnel, while Citigroup and Bank of America utilized them for sessions with external fund clients. Wall Street Prompt, bound by confidentiality agreements, did not disclose its client roster. Both T. Rowe Price and Citigroup, along with Bank of America, declined to comment on vendor-specific training.

Read: Wall Street banks cut 5,000 jobs despite record profits

The rising skill bar

Financial institutions were initially resistant to AI. In 2022, after the launch of ChatGPT, numerous major global banks restricted the tool’s use on their internal networks due to security concerns.

Since then, JPMorgan has rolled out LLM Suite, a generative AI tool utilized by most of its workforce. Goldman Sachs is working with Anthropic to create AI agents, while Bank of America reports that its 18,000 developers are achieving 20-25% higher productivity post-AI adoption.

However, many bankers lack the requisite skills to effectively utilize AI tools, while others cling to outdated models, presenting an opportunity for trainers who can optimize these AI systems.

“The main issue within large banks isn’t technology, but the workforce,” observed Jake Bridge, APAC managing director at Evolution, a tech recruitment firm based in the UK.

“The spectrum from Luddite to AI super adopter is extensive; the biggest challenge in a bank is determining how to address both ends.”

Asia is leading the way in AI integration within banking and finance, with growing automation in payments, lending, and customer service.

Notably, Singapore mandates AI literacy as a requirement for anyone aiming to work in the sector. The city-state ranks highest on the International Monetary Fund’s AI Preparedness Index out of 174 countries, and 64% of its financial institutions are deploying AI across significant business operations, according to a 2026 survey by London-based financial software firm Finastra.

Wang and Sinisterra are contemplating relocating to the city to cater to the demands of banks and finance professionals looking to secure their positions and enhance their employability.

Read: Why the world’s banks are wary of Anthropic’s latest AI model

Duncan, a 55-year-old Singaporean who preferred to remain unnamed, dedicated his evenings and weekends last year to a course sponsored by Nanyang Technological University to explore AI applications. His former employer, a major bank, had relocated its Singapore operations to a lower-cost location overseas.

Following a nine-month job search, he recently secured a back-office position at a Singapore bank and feels optimistic about his new skills.

While many executives credit productivity improvements to AI, concerns are growing that even solid financial standing may not ensure job stability.

While analyst positions are unlikely to completely disappear, they are expected to diminish from entry-level positions upward, predicts Igor Sydorenko, CEO of Neurons Lab, an AI consultancy for clients including HSBC and AXA.

“Highly skilled professionals using AI tools will accomplish 10 to 20 times the amount of work, and with greater accuracy and speed,” he stated. “They will not require junior analysts or associates. Tasks can be handled independently.”

Read: The rise of AI in financial services: Striking a balance between innovation and integrity

Justin Tang, a buy-side analyst at hedge fund Regal Funds Management in Singapore, recognizes the challenge of closing this gap. He spent three years attempting to self-learn AI amidst his busy work schedule—during commutes, in between meetings, and in spare moments.

Last year, he encountered Wang and Sinisterra.

“It was a life-changing experience,” Tang recounted. “Analyzing a company previously consumed hours. Now, with just a prompt, I can derive key insights in 90 seconds: what the company does, its main earnings drivers, and its story.”

Since then, Tang has attended several Wall Street Prompt training sessions, including one facilitated by Bank of America. Classes usually cater to 20-30 participants, with expenses covered by the hosting bank.

“I wasn’t surprised when top banks began offering training from Wall Street Prompt to clients like us,” Tang remarked. “It was more about when rather than if.”

Primarily using the techniques for personal development, he also applies them in his role at Regal. There, he restricts the use of tools to publicly accessible information like filings and earnings transcripts, ensuring client confidentiality.

Children of immigrants

Both Sinisterra and Wang have early backgrounds in finance coupled with a growing interest in technology. Sinisterra relocated from Colombia to the U.S. with his parents at age six, while Wang was born in New York City to parents who emigrated from China in the 1980s.

Wang started by selling scripts for the online game RuneScape shortly after moving to Ohio at age eight. During his undergraduate years at Harvard, he became one of the first five students recruited by Lyft Inc. to aid its expansion in Boston through distributing business cards.

Instead of just that, he gathered email addresses from students at nearby universities, initiated mail-merge efforts, and crafted targeted discount codes that generated sufficient referrals to cover his tuition costs.

After interning at Blackstone Inc in 2016 and serving at Morgan Stanley for over two years in 2017, he joined SoftBank’s Latin America Fund in 2019, leading crypto investments.

He left two and a half years later to launch 99 Capital, a digital asset fund, selling its general partnership after achieving strong returns for its investors.

“It became clear to me,” Wang noted. “If I’m spending approximately 30% of my time on AI playbooks and achieving my best returns ever, this is where I need to focus all my energy.”

Read: Trillion-dollar tech sell-off ensnares all AI-related stocks

Sinisterra began his career as a software engineer at Facebook and noted that his desk was just 20 feet from Mark Zuckerberg’s. After stints at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, he joined SoftBank as fintech head in 2019, overseeing over $1.5 billion in investments.

While collaborating at the Japanese tech investment firm, they frequently worked together, each devising his own AI strategy.

Wang left SoftBank in 2022, with Sinisterra following him in 2023. In the summer of 2025, they spent a month in San Francisco, sharing an apartment and working from a co-working space while publishing articles and newsletters focused on AI and finance.

Hedge fund managers and financial analysts consistently returned to read their insights. Although their initial goal was to build a data business, they discovered the appeal of providing educational opportunities.

“People kept expressing that they had the tools; they just didn’t know how to use them like we do,” Sinisterra explained. “They were eager to learn rather than just purchase additional software.”

Within two months of launching Wall Street Prompt in July 2025, a prominent investment firm reached out, prompting the duo to take a two-hour train ride from New York to train staff across equities, fixed income, and macro teams. Participants ranged from senior strategists to junior analysts.

Almost all clients returned for additional sessions, with Sinisterra noting that a fund managing over $50 billion in assets is on the verge of finalizing a contract. He did not disclose the fund’s identity.

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Wang and Sinisterra continue to adapt to maintain a competitive edge. They have built a library of AI agents customized to grasp the unique mindset of financial firms. Their goal, they stated, is for AI to handle 90% of logistical and technical tasks, enabling humans to focus on relationship-building, judgment, and decisions that enhance profitability.

The industry is becoming saturated. Multiverse, a London-based upskilling platform founded by Euan Blair, the eldest son of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is set to train 15,000 AI apprentices over two years, partnering with clients like Citigroup, Microsoft, and KPMG.

Rogo Technologies Inc, a New York startup founded by former bankers from Lazard and JPMorgan, raised $160 million in a Series D funding round this year, achieving a $2 billion valuation for software designed to automate the research and due diligence tasks traditionally carried out by analysts.

Sinisterra and Wang are currently working on a live webinar product aimed at financial professionals seeking AI training, projected to cost about $1,500 per participant.

“Ultimately, individuals are investing in transformation, not just in prompts or templates,” Sinisterra asserted. “We’re here to spark that change. People are already thinking about these transformations; they just need guidance.”

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