The 2026 Goldman Sachs Analyst Impact Fund Finals

• The 11th Annual Goldman Sachs Gives Analyst Impact Fund (AIF) awarded grants totaling $500,000, with a $250,000 grand prize, to four finalist non-profits selected by a panel of junior analysts.
• Since the AIF's inception over a decade ago, the program has grown from 1,000 analysts participating over three years to 1,000 participants in a single year.
• To date, 7,800 analysts have directed more than $6 million to 192 non-profits through the fund.
• This year, 3,000 employees across 60 global offices participated, with 1,063 analysts competing in preliminary rounds before 18 finalists reached the global stage.
• Every year, one in six firm partners participates in the competition as judges, coaches, or mentors; 38 partners served on the judging panel this year.
• A unique trend in this year's competition was the universal use of artificial intelligence to accelerate the missions of the selected non-profits.
• The Goldman Sachs Board of Directors members Ellen Coleman, Michelle Burns, and Kim Harris served as lead judges on the panel.

Outcomes and Award Distribution

• Every Cure (Winner, $250,000): Selected for its use of AI to repurpose existing generic drugs for rare diseases, bypassing traditional patent-based market incentives.
• Thorne (Second Place, $100,000 + $25,000 Fan Favorite): Awarded for "Project Prevent" and "Thorn Search," initiatives designed to stop AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and provide immediate guidance.
• Build Change (Third Place, $75,000): Selected for its preventative disaster-resilient housing program, utilizing the BCTAP app to retrofit homes in disaster-prone regions like the Philippines and Indonesia.
• WattTime (Fourth Place, $50,000): Awarded to build the world's first AI Emissions Index to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of data centers.

Every Cure: Strategy and Impact

• Every Cure aims to solve the market failure where 80% of FDA-approved generic drugs are underutilized because repurposing them requires costly clinical trials that pharmaceutical companies cannot recoup without patent exclusivity.
• The non-profit utilizes a three-stage process: AI mapping of 75 million drug-disease combinations, medical fellow assessment of safety and feasibility, and validation for clinical trials or dissemination.
• The $250,000 grant is allocated specifically to expand the medical research team to review an additional 2,000 drug-disease matches annually, addressing the human bottleneck between AI identification and treatment delivery.
• Repurposing existing drugs has the potential to be five times faster and 500 times less expensive than traditional drug development; the firm is funding the human element required to unlock this value.

Thorne: Technology and Child Safety

• Thorne reported that over 61 million suspected CSAM files were reported last year, averaging more than 100 files every minute, a threat accelerated by generative AI capabilities.
• "Project Prevent" (funded $220,000) will develop technology to make children's images resistant to AI manipulation at the source, projecting the prevention of 83 million CSAM photos within five years.
• "Thorn Search" (funded $30,000) will deploy an AI chatbot to centralize evidence-based child safety guidance, making it accessible to families and professionals during urgent situations.
• Thorne's "Safety by Design" framework is currently influencing major tech companies including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic on responsible AI development.

Build Change: Disaster Resilience and Housing

• Build Change's mission addresses the crisis where 2.8 billion people live in homes that cannot survive natural disasters, aiming to prevent human tragedy rather than just reacting to it.
• The firm's BCTAP app uses offline-first AI to generate strengthening designs and financing solutions, having already made 2.6 million people safer and safeguarded $5.2 billion in housing assets across 32 countries.
• The grant funds a 70/30 split between workforce development (training local builders and microfinance institutions) and technology upgrades to the BCTAP AI for region-specific recommendations.
• Expansion targets include retrofitting 20,000 people and assessing 2,000 homes by September 2027, specifically scaling programs in Manila, Philippines, and West Java, Indonesia.

WattTime: AI Emissions and Climate Impact

• Independent researchers found that AI data center emissions were 662% higher in 2024 than reported, creating a "blind spot" for the industry that WattTime aims to resolve with an independent AI Emissions Index.
• WattTime's $250,000 grant will fund the development of a public benchmark over four quarters in 2027, with the goal of indexing three-quarters of the world's AI labs.
• The initiative aims for a 10% cut in global AI data center emissions, achieving a return of $600 in avoided climate damage for every Goldman Sachs dollar invested.
• WattTime has already integrated its API into over a billion devices, including iPhones and Teslas, to shift energy consumption to cleaner hours and displace carbon-intensive power sources.

Analyst Development and Culture

• The competition leverages 600 lives lost daily globally due to unclean electricity, 300 million people with no medical answers, and exponential growth in AI-generated abuse as key motivating narratives for the analysts.
• Analysts cited the program's cross-divisional collaboration as a primary learning opportunity, with teams spanning engineering, audit, sales, and risk functions from New York, London, Frankfurt, and Bangalore.
• Past participants and mentors helped refine pitches, with one team citing advice from George Kevin (MD, Asset Management) to pivot from a simplistic pitch to one grounded in technical aspects of the AI initiative.
• The firm uses the AIF to demonstrate its culture of empowerment, allowing junior talent to lead major strategic decisions and pitch directly to the Board of Directors and senior leadership.