Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon calls software rout 'too broad' as Wall Street looks to steady investor nerves
- - Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon calls software rout 'too broad' as Wall Street looks to steady investor nerves
David HollerithFebruary 10, 2026 at 10:19 PM
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Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO David Solomon on Tuesday called last week's sharp sell-off in software industry stocks "a little bit too broad," joining Wall Street's chorus of voices urging patience as investor nerves frayed over the potential impacts of AI across the investing landscape.
"The narrative over the last week has been a little bit too broad," Solomon said at a UBS financial services conference in Key Biscayne, Fla. "There'll be winners and losers, and, you know, plenty of companies will pivot and do just fine," he added.
Solomon’s comments on Tuesday followed attempts by executives from the alternative investment industry to downplay these fears during earnings calls last week.
Shares of some of Wall Street's biggest private money managers, including Apollo Global Management (APO), Ares Management (ARES), Blackstone (BX), and KKR (KKR), came under pressure last week, given their known exposure to software companies threatened by recent AI advancements. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo Global Management.)
More acute pressure was felt in the stocks of smaller, alternative asset players like Blue Owl (OWL), whose CEO, Marc Lipschultz, offered some of the most strident criticism of the selling on the company's earnings call on Feb. 5.
"For those on the call that are thinking Fortune 500 companies are going to take all their software and just rip it out and just say, 'I'll just ask ChatGPT,' that's simply not the way it works," Lipschultz said. "Don't take my word for it again. We're not technologists. Take [Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang's words for it."
At Goldman, AI-related disruptions to software businesses are "something that we're monitoring," Solomon added Tuesday, but he said the bank's exposure to the industry is "insignificant" to its overall platform.
For the balance of 2026, Solomon remains bullish on the outlook for dealmaking, particularly within M&A.
“The likely outcome in 2026 is we're going to have a pretty constructive year for capital markets, a pretty constructive year for M&A,” Solomon said.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon speaks during an interview at the Economic Club of Washington in Washington, D.C., Oct. 30, 2025. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque) (Reuters / Reuters)
Goldman enjoyed one of its strongest years ever for its core businesses of dealmaking and trading in 2025 and entered 2026 with high hopes.
Through Monday, worldwide investment banking revenue so far this year is up 10%, driven by M&A and bond underwriting volumes, according to Dealogic data.
The biggest deals for investment banking year to date include Elon Musk's SpaceX acquiring xAI, along with massive bond deals from major tech firms Oracle (ORCL) and Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG), which are both planning huge investments amid the AI boom.
David Hollerith covers the financial sector, ranging from the country's biggest banks to regional lenders, private equity firms, and the cryptocurrency space.
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Source: “AOL Money”
