Morgan Stanley’s OpenAI Ties Show How Bank Reels in Hot Startups

Almost no one outside the tech industry had heard the term ChatGPT when a team at Morgan Stanley invited Sam Altman to its Menlo Park office to meet with some of the bank’s executives.

OpenAI was still months away from releasing its revolutionary chatbot when the meeting took place. But the Wall Street bank quickly signed on as one of OpenAI’s first clients, and, in the years since, has managed to land a large swath of business from one of the world’s hottest startups.

The trillions of dollars being raised and spent by AI companies have made them juicy clients ...