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Financial services firms: The only certainty is investing in AI transformation

Financial services firms: The only certainty is investing in AI transformation

Financial services firms are navigating a volatile economic picture, but have no plans to scrimp on their transformation and AI efforts.

Big banks are among the more experienced enterprises working with AI and many of them are in the second or third phases of transformation projects. Quarter-by-quarter these financial services giants are laying out the blueprint for other companies to follow even as the economic picture looks dicey at best.

Where we are now:

Here's a quick tour of what financial services CxOs are saying about their AI plans economy be damned.

Citigroup

Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, has been talking about technology transformation, AI and culling its legacy infrastructure for years. The results are starting to show up. In October, Citigroup laid out a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to leverage Vertex AI, the provider's high performance computing infrastructure and analytics stack. 

Citigroup CTO David Griffiths was a speaker at Google Cloud Next. He outlined how Citigroup was working on horizontal use cases for AI models and then going with vertical specialized scenarios. Citigroup is embracing AI as "a universal enabler" across its businesses.

Fraser said: "Our transformation investments continue to modernize our infrastructure, simplify our processes, and reduce manual touchpoints. During the quarter, we retired legacy applications and automated reconciliations, to name but a few accomplishments."

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She added that Citigroup is "integrating AI directly into our business operations to improve the client experience." The bank is working on Agent Assist, a genAI tool for customer service in US Personal Banking. It is also being piloted in credit cards.

Fraser noted that the economy is volatile, but is "protecting necessary investments in our businesses as well as our transformation." "We shall not allow the uncertainty to distract us from executing our strategy and improving our returns," she said.

Citigroup’s journey

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Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon also highlighted the company's AI investments while riffing on the economic picture that's uncertain.

Solomon said the priority is to "serve clients with excellence" while improving efficiency via technology and automation.

He said: "We are leveraging AI solutions to scale and transform our engineering capabilities as well as to simplify and modernize our technology stack. Today, many of our people have access to Generative AI powered tools to help them serve clients more efficiently and increase productivity. These include a developer co-pilot coding assistant and a natural language GS AI assistant. We continue to believe an acceleration in AI adoption will allow for further efficiencies for our own business and for companies large and small. As it is utilized more broadly, productivity gains for the economy will be significant."

Goldman’s journey:

 

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JPMorgan Chase

Yes, the economy may be a challenge for JPMorgan Chase. And yes, JPMorgan Chase will continue to invest in technology and AI, said CEO Jamie Dimon.

On the first quarter earnings call, JPMorgan Chase's Dimon was blunt as usual: "The investment that we do in banks, branches, technology, AI is going to continue regardless of the environment."

And Dimon will invest more if needed with JPMorgan Chase's fortress balance sheet. "Based upon the environment, the turbulence issues, I like having excess capital," said Dimon. "We are prepared for any environment and that's so we can serve clients. We have plenty of capital and plenty of liquidity to get through whatever the stormy seas are."

JPMorgan Chase outlines its technology and AI strategy annually at its investor day. The next update is May 19 at its investor day.

JPMorgan Chase's journey:

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The Bank of New York Mellon

The Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) has quietly built out an AI-powered operating model and recently announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI to drive models for financial services.

Speaking on BNY's first quarter conference call, CEO Robin Vince said: "We've been taking a platform-based approach to AI capabilities, building and deploying solutions at scale with resilient, responsible guardrails throughout. We believe that our AI platform is going to be an important advantage for us as a large language model agnostic design, leveraging frontier models from multiple leading providers."

Vince added that the deal with OpenAI will give BNY access to cutting edge models and technology and advance use cases.

So far, Vince said that more than 80% of employees have created training to access its AI platform called Eliza. He added that 8,000 employees are experimenting with personal AI agents.

"We have deployed more than 40 AI solutions into production with a significant additional number at various stages of building and testing," said Vince. "Collectively, we expect these to drive productivity gains, improved risk management and to provide meaningful leverage to our people in the future."

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BNY's journey:

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From Cost Center to Innovation Engine: Why GCCs Matter More Than Ever

From Cost Center to Innovation Engine: Why GCCs Matter More Than Ever

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) have quietly transformed how enterprises operate, innovate, and scale. Once seen as offshore extensions for cost savings, GCCs today are deeply embedded in the digital strategies of Fortune 500 firms and mid-market players alike. They’re helping organizations prototype AI solutions, drive product development, and create global talent pipelines that didn’t exist a decade ago.

India remains at the heart of this movement—with over 1,700 GCCs employing 1.9 million professionals and generating $65 billion in revenue as of FY2024. But this is a global story now. More than 300 new GCCs were launched in 2023 alone, across regions including Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

So what separates a high-performing GCC from the rest? A few things stand out:

  • Location strategy matters – India leads, but regional hubs like Poland, Mexico, and Singapore play key roles in multi-hub models.
  • Funding and operating models vary – Captive, partner-assisted, and hybrid models each have strengths depending on your priorities (speed, control, or scale).
  • Talent is the foundation – Compensation arbitrage is still real, but companies now pay a premium to attract top-tier digital talent. GCCs often manage 30–40% of their parent’s global workforce.
  • Maturity is earned – The best GCCs move from task execution to full product ownership to enterprise transformation. Many now house global P&Ls, drive AI R&D, and lead innovation programs.
  • Best practices are well established – From playbooks and onboarding models to governance structures and innovation labs, there’s a growing body of benchmarks and lessons from the field.

Over the past several months, I’ve been speaking with GCC leaders, partners, and executives to understand how the model is evolving—and what’s working. The result is an upcoming research report on “Global Capability Centers: Strategy, Talent, and Innovation in a Multipolar World.” It covers everything from legal frameworks and talent strategy to benchmarking success and real-world case studies.

I’ll be publishing the full report soon. If you’re planning a GCC, already running one, helping a client, or simply want to understand how global operating models are changing—this report is for you.

I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have feedback, use cases, or lessons to share, feel free to reach out.

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Infosys, Wipro say clients hitting pause on transformation projects

Infosys, Wipro say clients hitting pause on transformation projects

Infosys and Wipro say that enterprises are pulling back on large projects amid an uncertain economy and tariffs, but are still looking to artificial intelligence to cut costs and automate operations.

The results from the two Indian outsourcing giants aren't surprising given Accenture also cited uncertainty even those its quarter results were fine. Accenture has a large US government business.

Infosys reported fourth quarter revenue of $4.73 billion, up 4.8% from a year ago, with net income of $813 million. For fiscal 2025, Infosys reported net income of $3.16 billion on revenue of $19.28 billion, up 3.6% from a year ago.

The earnings from Infosys landed along with two acquisition announcements. Infosys said it would acquire Australian cybersecurity services company The Missing Link, and energy consulting company MRE Consulting. The company also said that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries would join its HIPUS joint venture in Japan.

But the issue for Infosys was its fiscal 2026 outlook, which projected flat revenue growth to 3% in constant currency.

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On a conference call, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said customers are cutting back amid uncertainty. "The changes that we have seen in the economic environment impact has happened very recently and over a short span," he said.

CFO Jayesh Sanghrajka said financial services and manufacturing budgets were solid--especially with AI--but retail, auto and industrial manufacturing budgets were weak. "Recent challenges in terms of tariffs, market uncertainties and trade buyers are likely to lead to a subdued spend and delayed decision-making," said Sanghrajka. "Client budgets are expected to be tightened and there is increased caution. Decision cycles are getting stretched for discretionary spend and larger deals. Exiting FY '25, global uncertainties relating to tariffs and impact of debt on client sentiments and spend are taking center stage."

Sanghrajka noted that the company's outlook will be reassessed based on the economic environment.

Nevertheless, Infosys customers are upbeat about AI. Clients are "moving from a use case-based approach to an AI-led transformational approach with AI agents playing a critical role," said Parekh, who noted AI wins in financial services and manufacturing.

"Across geos, there is increased focus on AI cloud, asset modernization, cost takeout and investing in core tech capabilities," said Sanghrajka. Infosys has said that customers are seeing productivity gains ranging from 20% to 40%.

Parekh said the company is aligning around taking costs out for customers. "Learning from the past, we typically see that this sort of an environment will provide more cost takeout opportunities," he said. "Consolidation and automation lead. We have also pivoted our sales activities into focusing and building more proactive pitches to clients on that area."

Wipro

Wipro reported fourth quarter revenue of $2.63 billion, down 1.3% from a year ago, with profit of $420 million. For fiscal 2025, Wipro reported profit of $2.05 billion on revenue of $10.43 billion.

As for the outlook, Wipro projected second quarter revenue to be $2.5 billion to $2.58 billion, or down 3.5% to 1.5% sequentially.

On a conference call, CEO Srinivas Pallia said customers were pulling back on big projects. He said:

"The global industry environment remained uncertain for most of the year and the recent tariff announcements have only added to that. I have been speaking to clients across sectors to understand how things are playing out on the ground. Even though the underlying demand for tech reinvention remains strong, clients are approaching it more cautiously. In fact, they are focused on cost, speed and AI-led efficiency, and that's exactly where we are leading it."

Pallia added that AI is part of every deal conversation and the focus is productivity and efficiency. He added that clients are going to "take a more measured approach going forward, especially on large transformation programs and discretionary spending."

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According to Pallia, Wipro's fourth quarter started well, but sentiment gradually turned negative due to tariffs and their impact.

He explained:

"This has definitely impacted our revenue growth momentum across sectors and markets. We were doing a large SAP program, which was very critical for the client, and this was in the consumer sector. When the client heard about the tariff situation, they put the whole program on pause, not because they don't want to do the program, but they wanted to understand, get the certainties of the tariff situation."

In Europe, clients have also slowed down transformation projects. These customers are reassessing timelines and delaying projects.

Pallia was asked about the outlook for the full year and the Wipro CEO noted that visibility was murky.

"With the recent developments, especially the macroeconomic situation, the tariff situation, we are keeping a very close watch on how the situation is evolving and how our clients are responding," he said. "At this stage our quarter of guidance represents the best visibility we have and definitely we will share all the updates coming quarters as we get clarity on the situation."

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TSMC's Q1: Takeaways on tariffs, AI demand and alleged Intel partnership

TSMC's Q1: Takeaways on tariffs, AI demand and alleged Intel partnership

Taiwan Semiconductor reported strong first quarter results, but most of the questions on the earnings recall revolved around tariffs, global expansion and AI infrastructure demand.

The quarter was carried by high-performance computing. TSMC reported first quarter earnings of $2.12 per ADR on revenue of $25.53 billion, up 35.3% from a year ago, but down 5.1% from the fourth quarter.

TSMC projected second quarter revenue of $28.4 billion to $29.2 billion. The company didn't provide an outlook for the second half of its fiscal year. TSMC results are being closely watched given that it sits in the middle of AI processor manufacturing and faces a lot of economic uncertainty.

Here are the takeaways from CEO CC Wei and CFO Wendell Huang:

TSMC sees strong demand from AI infrastructure. In the second quarter, TSMC sees strong growth for its 3nm and 5nm technologies. TSMC expects revenue from AI accelerators to double in 2025 including GPUs, TPUs, ASICs and HPM controllers for AI training and inferencing in data centers.

Tariffs. "We understand there are uncertainties and risk from the potential impact of tariff policies. However, we have not seen any change in our customers behavior so far, therefore, we continue to expect our full year 2025 revenue to increase by close to mid-20s percent in US dollar terms," said Wei, who added that next few months may give a better picture of any tariff hit.

DeepSeek and other reasoning models are bullish for AI long-term demand. "The impact from AI reasoning models including DeepSeek will drive greater efficiency and lower the barrier to future AI development," said Wei. "this will lead to wider usage and greater adoption of AI models, which all require the use of silicon."

US and global expansion. TSMC's Arizona fab has entered high volume production and the construction of a second fab with 3nm technology is complete. TSMC has two more fabs on decks, an advanced packaging facility and R&D center planned.

Wei added that TSMC is building out facilities in Japan and Germany. "Geographic manufacturing flexibility is an important part of our value proposition to the customers," said CFO Wendell Huang. "We are already discussing this with our major customers, and the progress is so far so good."

Wei said TSMC's 4-year growth forecast for AI includes geopolitical risks but is mindful of potential impacts and end-market demand.

Sorry Intel. TSMC and Intel were reportedly in talks for a joint venture for chip manufacturing, but Wei shot that down. "I would also like to mention that TSMC is not engaged in any discussion with other companies regarding any joint venture technology licensing or technology transfer," said Wei.

Pulling forward of demand due to tariffs? Wei said TSMC hasn't seen changes in customer behavior and there doesn't appear to be purchasing ahead of tariffs.

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OpenAI launches o3 reasoning model, o4-mini as it aims for 'more agentic ChatGPT'

OpenAI launches o3 reasoning model, o4-mini as it aims for 'more agentic ChatGPT'

OpenAI released its o3 and o4-mini models that can reason and use ChatGPT's multimodal tools. The release of its latest models are designed to tackle multi-faceted questions more effectively, a step toward a more agentic ChatGPT."

Ultimately, OpenAI is planning to roll up its models to enable ChatGPT to complete tasks for you. OpenAI is billing its latest models as "the smartest models we've released to date."

The launches come just days after OpenAI launched ChatGPT 4.1. Perhaps the biggest takeaway (aside from OpenAI's model naming conventions are confusing) is that ChatGPT will be more agentic and ultimately abstract the various models underneath.

Latest LLM news:

According to OpenAI, o3 is its most powerful reasoning model and excels at coding, math, science and visual perception. OpenAI's o4-mini is a smaller model that's optimized for fast reasoning at a lower cost.

Here's what you need to know about the latest release:

  • The new models can integrate images into their chain of thought and can handle whiteboard photos, textbook diagrams and sketches.
  • OpenAI o3 has equal latency and cost with OpenAI o1 with higher performance.
  • Both models can deploy tools through reinforcement learning when there's something it doesn't know.
  • ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Team users will see o3, o4-mini, and o4-mini-high in the model selector to replace o1, o3?mini, and o3?mini?high.
  • Enterprise and education accounts get access in a week.
  • OpenAI o3-pro will be released next.

Separately, OpenAI announced Codex CLI, which is a lightweight coding agent that can run from terminals. It works on the computer and id designed for o3 and o4-mini with support coming for GPT-4.1.

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Docusign launches AI contract agents

Docusign launches AI contract agents

Docusign launched AI contract agents, which will analyze agreements, highlight risks and surface issues that usually require human intervention.

The AI contract agents will be part of Docusign's Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform. Docusign's AI contract agents highlight how the early versions of agentic AI are aimed a processes that are a real headache for enterprises. Contract management, procurement and customer support are all focus areas for AI agents.

Docusign's AI agents also highlight how the company is expanding beyond its e-signature services. DocuSign said its IAM platform is powered by Iris, an AI engine that leverages the company's knowhow in contracts and agreements. Iris can use the right models for specific use cases revolving around contract needs.

According to Docusign, the first AI contract agents will be available by the end of 2025 and focus on procurement and sales workflows. Docusign's AIM platform is focused on sales, procurement, HR and legal.

The company has added the following to its AIM platform:

  • Agreement Prep, to create contracts via templates.
  • Agreement Desk, a collaboration tool for sales, procurement and legal teams.
  • AI-Assisted Review, to summarize contracts, compliance gaps and risks.
  • Workspaces, which bring together teams on multi-step agreements.
  • Identity verification via CLEAR.
  • Obligation management tools for tracking contractual commitments, renewals and other deadlines.

Allan Thygesen, CEO of Docusign, said the company's plan is to lean into IAM and build an ecosystem around it. He said on Docusign's fourth quarter earnings call:

"At the end of the year, we launched department-level deployments to enterprise customers while also opening up IAM availability globally. The initial launch delivered Docusign Navigator, our intelligent agreement repository; Docusign Maestro, our automated workflow builder; and the Docusign App Center, where ISV partners deliver third-party apps to customers."

The company initially launched IAM to SMB and midmarket customers in June and then expanded into large enterprises in December. For fiscal 2026, Docusign is targeting annual revenue of $3.13 billion and $3.14 billion.

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Nvidia to eat $5.5 billion in H20 inventory over new US export rules

Nvidia to eat $5.5 billion in H20 inventory over new US export rules

Nvidia illustrates the difficulty operating as US government rules, tariffs and other policies change almost daily.

In an SEC filing, Nvidia said it will take a first quarter charge of $5.5 billion due to new export rules on its H20 chips to China. Nvidia sold its H20 chips into China because its more powerful GPUs and accelerators were banned.

China vs. US AI war: Fact, fiction or missing the point?

According to Nvidia, the US government informed the company April 9 that its H20 chips would require a license to be sold in China for the "indefinite future." As result, Nvidia will take a first quarter charge of about $5.5 billion associated with "H20 products for inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves."

That news came two days after Nvidia said its Blackwell chip production will start in Arizona at TSMC's chip plant. Nvidia said it is also building supercomputing manufacturing plans with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas.

Nvidia said the plan is to ramp production at both Texas plants in the next 12 to 15 months.

The GPU giant's whiplash is a microcosm of what other enterprises are facing. Tariffs are on, off, and on again with exceptions sometimes within the same day.

See:

Despite the charge, Nvidia demand looks strong. Enterprises have said despite uncertainty they are proceeding with AI projects. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser summed up the consensus among CEOs. She said Citigroup is protecting necessary investments in our businesses as well as our transformation." "We shall not allow the uncertainty to distract us from executing our strategy and improving our returns," she said.

More Nvidia:

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"These export restrictions are actually good news for enterprises located in North America, Europe and other geographies, as it may make more Nvidia chips available. The question is always - will Nvidia become a victim of the Osbourne effect, but with on premises demand being alive and well, there will be a number of CxOs who will be more than happy to get these H20 chips. Nvidia may well come out with a little bruise from this situation."

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Anthropic Claude Research integrates with Google Workspace

Anthropic Claude Research integrates with Google Workspace

Anthropic said its Claude large language model (LLM) will integrate with Google Workspace to add enterprise documents for its Research feature for Max, Team and Enterprise customers.

The company's Claude model has had an enterprise spin and vision that revolves around making its LLM a work partner. With its Google Workspace integration, Claude will be able to add internal documents such as email, calendar and docs.

According to Anthropic, Research is in early beta, web search is available in the US and Workspace integration is available in beta.

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Anthropic said in a blog post:

"With Research, Claude can search across both your internal work context and the web to help you make decisions and take action faster than before."

Claude will also provide inline citations to verify sources. Anthropic is betting that integration with Google Workspace will enable Claude to handle more marketing, sales, engineering and education use cases.

A few thoughts on Claude's integration with Google Workspace.

  • The integration between Claude Research and Google Workspace will enable more bakeoffs between Anthropic and Google Cloud's Gemini models.
  • Google Workspace is likely just the first Anthropic partner. Expect more partnerships with the likes of Box and other content repositories.
  • Anthropic is building a set of tools around Claude and ultimately could become more of a work collaboration platform.
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Cohere rolls out Embed 4, an enterprise multimodal search model

Cohere rolls out Embed 4, an enterprise multimodal search model

Cohere launched Embed 4, a multimodal embedding model that beefs up enterprise search and retrieval for AI apps.

According to Cohere, Embed 4 can quickly search unstructured data including PDF reports, presentation slide and other documents with text, images, tables and diagrams.

The launch is a fast follow-up to Command A, a model designed to minimize compute resources while delivering strong performance.

Embed 4 also can generate embeddings for documents up to 128K tokens or about 200 pages. The model is also multilingual with more than 100 languages.

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If you zoom out a bit, Cohere's moves with Embed 4 highlight a broader product strategy that revolves around enterprise use cases. For instance, Cohere said Embed 4 is "optimized with domain-specific understanding of data from regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing."

Cohere in January launched North, an AI platform designed for streamlining work. Cohere is also developing a version of North for banking.

The company also noted that Embed 4 can be deployed in virtual private clouds or on-premise environments. Cohere's game plan is to address enterprise retrieval augmented generation (RAG), which will be critical to deploying AI agents.

Cohere noted that Embed 4 can search unstructured documents where they reside and represent them in a unified vector. Embed 4 is available on Cohere, Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Amazon SageMaker for virtual private cloud and on-premises deployments.

With Embed 4, Cohere is addressing multiple areas of the model stack including retrieval as well as prompt augmentation with Rerank and generation with Command A models.

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Bank of America's AI investments boost digital engagement, customer satisfaction

Bank of America's AI investments boost digital engagement, customer satisfaction

Bank of America is infusing AI throughout its primary units--consumer banking, global wealth and investment management and global banking and markets--and plans to spend $4 billion on new projects as its digital engagement gained throughout 2024.

The company outlined how its AI and machine learning tools, which are headlined by its Erica virtual assistant that launched in 2018, are gaining traction for multiple use cases.

Bank of America CTO and CIO Aditya Bhasan said "our use of AI at scale enables us to further enhance our capabilities, improve employee productivity and client service and drive business growth."

The bank has an annual technology budget of $13 billion and $4 billion of that sum is allocated to new AI projects in 2025. Bank of America has more than 1,200 AI and machine learning patents.

Key projects include:

  • Erica for Employees was launched in 2020 and expanded in 2023 for use cases in health benefits, payroll, tax forms and HR use cases. Erica for Employees is used by 90% of workers and has reduced calls into the IT service desk by 50%.
  • Bank of America said Erica for Employees will use generative AI to cover more topics.
  • Ask Merrill and Ask Merrill takes the technology for Erica and uses it for curate information and data and client experiences.
  • The Academy is an AI driving training platform for coaching with conversation simulators. Employees completed more than 1 million simulations in 2024 to practice client conversations.
  • AI is also being used for coding assistance, client meeting prep, optimizing call centers and research.

What sticks out for Bank of America's use cases for AI is that much of the projects are aimed at experience and driving revenue growth. The employee efficiency angle to AI was added later--partially due to the benefits of generative AI.

These efforts have enabled Bank of America to grow revenue and efficiency as well as digital interactions, which can offer better experiences at lower costs.

Bank of America, like many financial services firms, reported strong first quarter results. The company reported first quarter earnings of $7.4 billion, or 90 cents a share, on revenue of $27.4 billion, up 6% from a year ago. Bank of America added consumer and global wealth and private bank accounts of 250,000 and 7,200, respectively. Average deposits grew for the seventh consecutive quarter to nearly $2 trillion.

Going forward, here are some of the trends to watch.

Consumer Banking

  • Can Bank of America boost its digital enabled sales and to what level? In the first quarter, digital sales were 65% of the total in consumer banking.
  • Can Erica interactions largely replace human interactions?

"Digital adoption and engagement continued to improve, and customer experience scores rose to record levels, illustrating the appreciation of enhanced capabilities from these investments," said CFO Alastair Borthwick.

Global Wealth and Investment Management

Digital adoption reaches 87% of global wealth relationships. Can that tally get to nearly 100% as customers age out?

Global Banking

Digital engagement is lower for the global banking unit and may provide upside in the future.

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