The 2026 Goldman Sachs Analyst Impact Fund Finals

• The 11th annual Goldman Sachs Gives Analyst Impact Fund (AIF) awarded a total of $500,000 in grants, with a grand prize of $250,000 for the top team.
• Since the program's inception over a decade ago, 7,800 analysts have directed more than $6 million to 192 non-profits.
• Participation grew exponentially from 1,000 analysts across the first three years combined to 1,000 analysts participating in a single year.
• The 2025 competition featured 18 finalists selected from 1,063 analysts who participated in preliminary rounds.
• This year marked a thematic shift where all finalist organizations utilized Artificial Intelligence to accelerate their missions.
• Judges included three Goldman Sachs Board of Directors members: Ellen Coleman, Michelle Burns, and Kim Harris, alongside 38 partner judges.
• Global participation spanned 60 offices and 3,000 attendees, with teams pitching from New York, London, Norwalk, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Bangalore, Dubai, Shanghai, Chicago, and Santiago.

2025 Competition Results and Grant Allocations

• Winner: Every Cure
  • Awarded the grand prize of $250,000.
  • Focus: Repurposing existing FDA-approved drugs for rare diseases using AI to identify 75 million potential drug-disease combinations.
  • Grant Usage: Expansion of the medical research team to review 2,000 additional drug-disease matches annually (Stage 2 of their process), bridging the gap between AI algorithmic matching and human safety validation.
  • Mission Impact: Aims to reduce drug development time by five times and costs by 500 times compared to traditional methods.
• Runner-Up: Thorn
  • Awarded $100,000 plus the $25,000 "Fan Favorite" award.
  • Focus: Combating AI-generated Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), which rose to over 61 million suspected files reported last year.
  • Grant Usage: Funding for "Project Prevent" ($220,000 equivalent portion) to build technology making children's photos resistant to AI manipulation, and "Thorn Search" ($30,000 equivalent) to create an AI chatbot centralizing abuse prevention resources.
  • Projected Impact: Preventing 83 million CSAM photos within five years of deployment.
• Third Place: Build Change
  • Awarded $75,000.
  • Focus: Disaster-resilient housing and climate adaptation for 2.8 billion people at risk in unsafe housing.
  • Grant Usage: Scaling retrofit programs in the Philippines (Manila) and Indonesia (West Java) with a 70/30 budget split between workforce development (local builder training) and BCTAP AI technology enhancements.
  • Projected Impact: Reaching 20,000 people and assessing 2,000 homes by September 2027.
• Fourth Place: WattTime
  • Awarded $50,000.
  • Focus: Creating the world's first public AI Emissions Index to measure real-time carbon output of data centers.
  • Problem Context: Independent researchers found 2024 AI data center emissions were 662% higher than reported.
  • Grant Usage: $250,000 equivalent (via the $250k prize to winner, but WattTime received the 4th place allocation of $50k) to fund the four-quarter development of the index through 2027.
  • Projected Impact: Indexing over three-quarters of global AI labs to target a 10% reduction in emissions, yielding $600 in climate damage avoided per Goldman dollar invested.

Program Structure and Cultural Impact

• The AIF operates as a culture-building initiative designed to empower junior talent to lead and deliver meaningful change.
• Analysts pitch to the firm's leaders, leveraging both human capital and firm capital to address pressing global issues.
• The competition fosters cross-divisional collaboration, with teams often spanning engineering, audit, sales, and risk management roles across different geographic regions.
• A significant portion of the firm's senior partners (one in six partners this year) engaged as mentors, coaches, and judges.
• Winning teams received visibility with division heads and recognition for their contributions to the firm's corporate engagement legacy.
• The final round included a "Fan Favorite" component, allowing global audiences to cast votes for an additional $25,000 grant.