Goldman Sachs is the most prestigious investment bank globally, advising on the world's largest mergers, IPOs, and debt offerings. Its Securities trading division is the most profitable on Wall Street. Marcus consumer banking and asset management diversify from trading. Goldman's alumni network runs hedge funds, private equity firms, and central banks globally. 'Government Sachs' reflects its influence in Washington.
Key relationships in depth
Goldman Sachs & Apple
Apple and Goldman Sachs co-launched the Apple Card in August 2019, with Goldman as the issuing bank and Apple as the consumer interface. At peak the card had approximately 12M cardholders and $20B in outstanding loan balances. In January 2026, Goldman announced the transfer of the entire Apple Card program to JPMorgan Chase, selling the $20B loan portfolio at a $1B discount, reflecting the depth of Goldman's losses on the product.
Why it matters: The partnership was central to Apple's financial services push and Goldman's Marcus consumer banking expansion. For Goldman, it proved a costly miscalculation: the firm approved customers at lower credit quality than its traditional clientele, leading to higher default rates and losses exceeding $1B on the card specifically and $3B-plus across the broader consumer division.
Goldman Sachs has a significant Microsoft enterprise relationship spanning Azure cloud infrastructure, Microsoft 365 for collaboration across 40,000+ employees, and Azure OpenAI Service for Goldman's AI development programs. Goldman has deployed Microsoft Copilot pilots for investment bankers and traders, and its GS AI Platform leverages Azure's model hosting capabilities for financial model development and client-facing AI tools.
Why it matters: Goldman Sachs's shift toward technology-driven investment banking and trading requires cloud infrastructure that can scale with quantitative model complexity and trading volume, and Azure's enterprise security certifications and financial services compliance frameworks meet Goldman's regulatory requirements. Microsoft gains Goldman Sachs as a financial services reference customer, which is critical for enterprise AI sales cycles in the highly risk-averse banking sector.
Goldman Sachs has a growing Google Cloud partnership focused on data analytics and AI, using Google BigQuery for large-scale financial data processing and Google's Vertex AI for developing credit and risk models. Goldman's consumer banking platform (Marcus) and its Apple Card partnership infrastructure leverages Google Cloud's data analytics capabilities, and Goldman has explored Gemini model integration for investment research automation.
Why it matters: Google's BigQuery offers Goldman's quantitative analysts a massively parallel SQL analytics platform optimized for financial time-series data at petabyte scale, with performance characteristics tailored to the backtesting and risk aggregation workflows central to Goldman's trading operations. Google Cloud gains Goldman Sachs as a financial services AI reference customer, which is valuable for competing with Azure in the highly conservative banking sector.
Goldman Sachs & Amazon
Goldman Sachs uses AWS as a primary cloud infrastructure provider for its trading platforms, risk management systems, and data analytics workloads. Goldman's Marquee institutional platform, which provides portfolio analytics and trading tools to institutional clients, runs on AWS compute and storage infrastructure. Goldman also uses Amazon SageMaker for machine learning model development and deployment in quantitative research and risk applications.
Why it matters: Goldman's quantitative trading operations require scalable, high-performance cloud compute that can burst capacity during market volatility, and AWS's EC2 fleet and low-latency networking meet the sub-millisecond requirements for automated trading strategies. Amazon benefits from Goldman's institutional credibility as a lighthouse customer in capital markets, validating AWS's capability for high-frequency financial workloads.
Relationships are compiled by VexMap from company filings, announcements and reporting, and last reviewed September 2026. Spotted something wrong? Tell us. Not investment advice.