Goldman Sachs' top AI researcher has decided to retire, right now
Kash Rangan spent 30 years covering software stocks as an equity research analyst. Now AI is here, doing better than ever, and Rangan is retiring.
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In a social media post, Rangan thanked a multitude of people for his time at GS, with the first being his wife Yamini, who serves as CEO of San Francisco-based software firm HubSpot.
(Kash) Rangan has covered the firm in the past, when he was at BofA in 2020 – he even named it one of his top stocks to watch, according to Pulse 2.0. That recommendation was published before (Yamini) Rangan joined the firm, and it does not appear he has covered HubSpot since.
Since joining Goldman, most of Rangan’s attention in the last few years, much like his colleagues, and much like ours, was spent on the potential of AI, despite his usual coverage being on more traditional software companies.
Rangan has always been an AI optimist. Comparing its moment in the news and markets today to the emergence of the web browser in the 1990s, which many expected to kill existing software, Rangan explained AI as a “force multiplier” instead, leading to a rebirth of software companies.
Despite his general bullishness, a lot of Rangan’s recent optimism was related to the companies he was covering as an analyst, which were software companies. “A lot of software stocks are trading at depressed valuations,” Rangan said on a Goldman-hosted podcast back in November, and pointed to the intense amount of money pouring into AI from deep-pocketed “hyper scale” giants, rather than the venture capital and private equity giants that funded the dot com boom. Rangan thought the fear that AI would eat those software companies’ lunches was unfounded.
Why quit now? Good question. If AI is a bubble, it’s one that hasn’t popped yet – and it is, by all accounts, still inflating. Perhaps a clue comes from Rangan’s retirement post. Thinking back on his time at GS, he said that he “matured in ways I had not expected,” which included “putting the client, the team and the firm before yourself.”
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