TL;DR JPMorgan is hiring Nomura’s international AI strategy head Tahir Zafar. He joins a team already led by another Nomura alumnus.
JPMorgan Chase is hiring Nomura Holdings’ international head of artificial intelligence strategy, according to Bloomberg, as the largest US bank by assets accelerates its recruitment of AI specialists. Singapore-based Tahir Zafar, who joined Nomura in late 2023 and was promoted to his current role in March 2025, is expected to start around July after completing his gardening leave.
At JPMorgan, Zafar will report to Deep Thomas, the bank’s Asia-Pacific chief data and analytics officer, who himself moved from Nomura in August 2025 after a four-year stint. The back-to-back hires from the same Japanese bank’s AI leadership suggest JPMorgan is not simply filling positions but extracting an established team.
The hire follows comments from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon last month at the bank’s China Summit in Shanghai, where he told Bloomberg Television that JPMorgan will likely hire more AI specialists and fewer traditional bankers as the technology reshapes operations. “I think it will reduce our jobs down the road,” Dimon said, adding that the bank would retrain and redeploy employees and, in some cases, offer early retirement.
