Something fascinating is happening inside Goldman Sachs right now.

And almost no one is connecting the dots.

Over the past year, Goldman has:

• Invested in Kim Kardashian's SKIMS at a $4–5 billion valuation.¹

• Acquired a major sports management business for roughly $1 billion.²

• Purchased a $7 billion venture capital portfolio.³

• Earned a record $110 million fee for advising on the EA gaming deal.⁴

• Promoted 638 bankers to Managing Director — the largest class in firm history.⁵

At first glance, these moves look scattered.

Fashion. Sports. Venture capital. Gaming. Promotions.

But examined together, a clear thesis emerges.

Goldman is repositioning itself for the world after AI.

Not the hype-fueled world where companies race to build ever-larger models.

Not the GPU bunker economy.

Not the illusion that scale equals strategy.

The real transformation is much simpler, and far more profound:

When AI commoditizes information, the only things that matter are the things AI cannot replace.

Goldman sees this coming, and they're acting accordingly.

The End of the Information Moat

AI does one thing extraordinarily well:

it destroys the value of tasks built on information processing.

Everything downstream of:

• analysis

• summarization

• research

• diligence

• forecasting

• internal memos

• data synthesis

…becomes cheap, fast, and undifferentiated.

In the last two years, we've seen models achieve:

• parity on analyst-grade research tasks

• competency in early-stage financial modeling

• fully automated first-draft presentations

• synthetic data generation at industrial scale

The entire bottom half of the pyramid — the analyst and associate work that once powered Goldman — has already begun collapsing.

The output is no longer scarce.

The insight is no longer scarce.

The labor is no longer scarce.

Judgment is.

Taste is.

Trust is.

Culture is.

Relationships are.

Human meaning is.

That's why Goldman's recent moves make perfect sense once you understand the first principles logic underneath them.

1. SKIMS: A Bet on Cultural Capital in a Commoditized World

SKIMS isn't about shapewear.

It's about something much more fundamental:

cultural identity in an age where identity becomes the last economic moat.

AI can generate text.

AI can generate images.

AI can generate strategies.

But AI cannot generate:

• belonging

• aspiration

• status signaling

• the emotional architecture of consumer desire

Culture becomes more valuable as automation spreads.

Goldman is buying into the parts of the economy that remain human, irrational, tribal, and immune to automation.

2. Sports: The Last Unautomatable Content Format

Sports are the final mass-market, appointment-based attention engine.

They are:

• live

• unscripted

• emotional

• communal

• irrational

All things AI cannot replicate.

Every other content category, news, entertainment, education, has been transformed by AI-driven personalization and synthetic media.

Sports remain the last tribal reservoir of undistorted human attention.

A billion-dollar move into sports management is a bet on scarcity.

3. Venture Capital: Preparing for the AI Reset

Everyone focuses on AI's hype cycle.

Goldman is preparing for the correction:

• overfunded startups

• inflated valuations

• mispriced infrastructure

• unsustainable unit economics

• circular financing deals disguised as innovation

A $7 billion VC acquisition gives Goldman exposure not to the bubble, but to the rubble.

They're positioning themselves to own the next decade of private markets after the AI shakeout resets valuations back to reality.

4. EA and the Future of AI-Driven M&A

Goldman's $110 million EA fee is not just a record.

It's a preview.

As AI transforms gaming, entertainment, and virtual IP, the next decade of M&A will center on:

• digital worlds

• character IP

• real-time simulation

• synthetic media

• interactive environments

• creator-owned franchises

AI collapses some industries and explodes others.

Gaming is one of the latter.

Goldman wants to run the table.

5. Promoting 638 New MDs: Judgment Over Labor

Promoting the largest MD class in firm history, at the exact moment AI is eroding junior labor — is not a coincidence.

It is a philosophical statement about the future of work.

AI will augment analysts.

AI will replace associates.

AI will accelerate modeling.

But AI will never replace:

• senior judgment

• deal intuition

• relationships

• trust

• narrative framing

• strategic imagination

Goldman is expanding the part of the org chart that becomes more valuable as AI scales.

They're widening the top of the pyramid, just as the bottom begins to flatten.

The Pattern: Goldman Is Buying What AI Cannot Touch

When you zoom out, the thesis crystallizes:

• Culture (SKIMS)

• Tribe (Sports)

• Long-horizon value (VC)

• AI-driven consolidation (M&A)

• Human judgment (MD expansion)

This is a full-stack repositioning around the only parts of the economy where AI will not drive margins to zero.

While Big Tech is building:

• larger models

• bigger GPU farms

• more expensive infrastructure

Goldman is buying:

• identity

• meaning

• relationships

• trust

• influence

• culture

• attention

• judgment

This is not a retreat from AI.

It is a strategy for the world AI creates.

The Return to First Principles

The greatest irony of the AI era is that it's pushing the economy back toward the oldest truths we've forgotten:

Value is human.

Trust is human.

Belief is human.

Meaning is human.

Culture is human.

Identity is human.

Judgment is human.

This is what Goldman sees.

This is what they're acting on.

And this is the strategic blind spot almost every other institution is missing:

When AI is everywhere, humanity becomes the only real competitive advantage.

Goldman isn't chasing AI.

Goldman is future-proofing itself from it.

They're betting on the one asset class that has never been disrupted in 5,000 years of economic history:

Us.

Footnotes

1. Goldman participated in SKIMS' $270M funding round, valuing the company at $4–5B (Bloomberg, WSJ).
2. Goldman acquired a majority stake in a leading sports management group valued around $1B (Bloomberg, FT).
3. Goldman purchased a $7B venture capital portfolio, one of the largest secondary deals ever (CNBC, Reuters).
4. Goldman earned approximately $110M advising on the EA/Take-Two transaction, among the highest M&A fees recorded (Bloomberg, FT).
5. Goldman promoted 638 employees to Managing Director in 2023/24 — the largest class in firm history (Goldman Sachs Press Release).