JPMorgan plans to increase its technology budget by about $2 billion this year to $19.8 billion, about a 10% increase compared to 2025.
“Technology remains the primary driver of our expense growth,” Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Burnham said Monday, speaking during the company’s 2026 corporate report, which he said increased by about $9 billion for the year. The bulk of the technology costs come from $1.2 billion in investments, including some AI-related projects.
Later in the presentation, CEO Jamie Dimon said it’s difficult to quantify the benefits of AI on a per-initiative basis. In response to a question from Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo about the bank’s technology spending on a recent earnings call, Dimon said time saved is often “too nebulous” to specifically measure.
“I think technology projects are always the hardest to measure,” Dimon said. “That’s been true all my life.”
Burnham said the company’s investments are focused on the “highest impact areas” such as customer service in call centers, personalized insights for customers and technology for software engineers. Burnham told investors that GenAI is an increasing proportion of banks’ AI use.
A slide from the company’s latest information presentation shows a breakdown of technology spending. JP Morgan
Part of the $2 billion increase is due to inflation that affects everyone, including the rising cost of AI hardware. Headcount growth in technology is not a key driver — Burnham said the bank has budgeted for additional headcount in the region to work on new products, but there is generally a culture of reluctance to add headcount as new opportunities arise.
Despite JPMorgan’s status as a technology-advanced company and its No. 1 ranking on the Evident AI Index, which measures AI maturity in banks, management did not ignore the competition. In response to Mayo’s earlier question, Marian Lake said the bank had several strategic assets, including data.
“Only the paranoid survive,” said Lake, CEO of Consumer and Community Banking. “We don’t walk around thinking we have a divine right to success. We walk around thinking about how to optimize the value we deliver to our customers, how to perfect our processes and systems.”
JPMorgan isn’t the only bank investing heavily in technology. Competitors are also rapidly integrating AI across the trading floor, back office, and beyond to increase efficiency and improve customer experience. Bank of America said it plans to spend about $14 billion on technology this year.
Mr. Dimon previously asked investors to “trust him” on the bank’s spending and said he was trying to keep the company abreast with the January earnings release.
“We need to have the best technology in the world,” he continued. “That drives investment, it drives margins, it drives competition.”
