Bank of America taps new leaders to bridge crypto, AI and traditional finance

Bank of America has appointed new leaders to spearhead the firm's digital assets and artificial intelligence strategies, following a trend of traditional financial institutions building specialized teams around the technologies.

Sonali Theisen was named head of BofA's global digital assets platform, while Kevin Milsom was tapped to serve as head of AI transformation, according to internal memos first reported by Reuters and Bloomberg.

Theisen will "oversee design, development, scaling and governance of the bank’s digital-assets platform" on top of her current role leading electronic trading and strategic investments across the bank’s fixed income, currencies and commodities division.

Her responsibilities will focus on bringing blockchain-based products into BofA's existing markets infrastructure, working alongside digital asset transformation chief Adam Dixon, who oversees "tokenized deposits and stablecoins, digital collateral mobility, cryptocurrency trading settlement and custody."

Milsom, meanwhile, is tasked with implementing AI across the bank's global markets platforms.

This follows similar efforts seen across many other Wall Street-native banks and institutions.

Earlier this month, Vanguard began searching for its first head of digital assets to develop a crypto strategy for personal wealth clients and engage with regulators.

Morgan Stanley appointed veteran executive Amy Oldenburg to lead its digital asset strategy in January after filing to list spot Bitcoin and Solana ETFs. Oldenburg said in April that crypto was becoming part of the firm’s "daily business operations" as it works to integrate crypto and tokenization with existing infrastructure across custody, wallets and data.

The AI and crypto overlap is also taking hold outside of Wall Street. In February, Elon Musk's xAI was seeking a crypto quantitative expert to help train its models on digital asset derivatives, onchain analytics and decentralized finance protocols.