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The GPT-4 logo is seen in this photo illustration on 13 March, 2023 in Warsaw, Poland. 

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Major banks and fintech companies claim to be piling into generative artificial intelligence as the hype surrounding the buzzy technology shows no signs of fizzling out — but there are lingering fears about potential pitfalls and risks.

At the Money 20/20 fintech conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands, executives at large lenders and online finance firms sang the praises of generative AI, calling it an “explosion of innovation,” and saying it will “unleash innovation in areas that we can’t even think about.”

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Chalapathy Neti, head of AI at global bank messaging network Swift, described the progress made with ChatGPT and GPT-4 as “mind-boggling.” He added, “This is truly a transformative moment.”

But in the short term, banks are scrambling to figure out the use cases.

The Netherlands’ ABN Amro is one banking giant that’s piloting the use of generative AI in its processes.

Annerie Vreugdenhil, chief commercial officer of ABN Amro’s personal and business banking division, revealed on a panel that it is using the technology to automatically summarize conversations between bank staff and customers. It’s also using it to help its employees gather data on customers to assist with answering queries and avoid repetitive questions.

The bank is now in the process of scaling these pilots to 200 employees and is exploring a number of new pilots to start this summer.

In a closed-door session on the application of AI in financial services, meanwhile, two banking executives explained how they’re using the technology to improve their internal code and analyze how their clients are behaving.

“We are experimenting at this stage and we don’t have necessarily anything client facing but we are using the [tech the] same as other companies, for example, code refactoring, comms calls, the other way around,” said Mariana Gomez de la Villa, an executive at ING Bank specializing in strategy and innovation.

Indeed, the banks appeared unanimous in their hesitation to roll out ChatGPT-like tools to customer-facing scenarios.

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Jon Ander Beracoechea Alava, advanced analytics discipline head at Spanish bank BBVA, said that the lender had taken a “conservative approach” to AI, adding that, at this stage, generative AI is “still early” and “immature.”

A crucial issue is that advanced AI systems require the processing of huge volumes of data — a sensitive commodity wrapped up in all kinds of rules and regulations. As such, Alava said that at this stage it was too “risky” to involve sensitive information from customers.

Generative A.I., explained

Generative AI is a specific form of AI that is able to produce content from scratch. The systems take inputs from the user and feed them into powerful algorithms fueled by large datasets to generate new text, images and video in a way that’s more humanlike than most AI tools already on the market.

The technology was thrust into the spotlight following the success of OpenAI’s GPT language processing technology. ChatGPT, which uses massive language models to create human-sounding responses to questions, has ignited an arms race among some companies over what is seen as the next “paradigm shift” in tech.

In March, Goldman Sachs‘ chief information officer, Marco Argenti, told CNBC the bank is experimenting with generative AI tools internally to help its developers automatically generate and test code.

More recently, in May, Goldman spun off the first startup from the bank’s internal incubator — an AI-powered social media company for corporate use called Louisa. The push into AI is part of a larger effort by CEO David Solomon to expedite the bank’s digital makeover.

Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, is using it to inform its financial advisors on queries they may have. The bank has been testing an OpenAI-powered chatbot with 300 advisors so far, with a view to ultimately aid its roughly 16,000 advisors in making use of Morgan Stanley’s repository of research and data, according to Jeff McMillan, head of analytics and data at the firm’s wealth management division.

A.I. ‘co-pilot’

These are just some examples of how financial firms are using AI, but more as a digital helper than as a core part of their services.

Gudmundur Kristjansson, CEO and co-founder of Icelandic regulatory technology firm Lucinity, showed CNBC how artificial intelligence can be used to assist with a key area in finance: fighting crime.

An AI tool the company created, called Luci, aims to help compliance professionals with their investigations. In a live demonstration, Kristjansson showed himself looking into a money laundering case. The AI tool analyzed the case and described what it saw and then completed an independent review.

In this use case, the AI acts as more of a resource — or “copilot” — to help an employee find data and flesh out a case rather than replace the role of a person looking into reports of suspicious activity.

“Where you find money laundering is through interconnected networks of people who are basically employed to do it. That’s why it’s so hard to find it. Banks spent this year $274 billion on prevention,” Kristjansson told CNBC in an interview.

He said where Luci helps is by vastly reducing the amount of time spent trying to work out whether something is fraud or money laundering.

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The whole appeal of AI to the big banks and fintechs, Money 20/20 attendees said, is the potential reduction in the time and money it takes to complete tasks that can take human employees days.

Niklas Guske, chief operating officer at Taktile, a startup that helps fintechs automate decision-making, acknowledged that the use of AI is challenging in the financial sector, given the lack of publicly available data.

But he stressed that it could be a “crucial” tool to reduce the companies’ operational expenses and improve efficiency.

“In many fintech applications, this is done through an increase in automation and reducing manual processes, especially in onboarding and underwriting,” he told CNBC.

“This automation is truly enabled through access to more data sources, which empower lenders to gain new insights and identify the right customers without having to parse through dozens of PDFs for the right piece of information.”

— CNBC’s Hugh Son contributed reporting.

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Coinbase joining S&P 500 days after bitcoin soared past $100,000

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Coinbase joining S&P 500 days after bitcoin soared past 0,000

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Coinbase is joining the S&P 500, replacing Discover Financial Services in the benchmark index, according to a release on Monday. Shares of the crypto exchange jumped 8% in extended trading.

The change will take effect before trading on May 19. Discover is in the process of being acquired by Capital One Financial.

Since going public through a direct listing in 2021, Coinbase has become a bigger part of the U.S. financial system, with bitcoin soaring in value and large institutions gaining regulatory approval to create spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

Bitcoin spiked last week, topping $100,000 and nearing its record price reached in January.

However, Coinbase has been a particularly volatile stock and is trading well below its peak from late 2021. The shares closed on Monday at $207.22, giving the company a market cap of $53 billion. At its high, the stock traded at over $357.

Stocks added to the S&P 500 often rise in value because funds that track the S&P 500 will add it to their portfolios.

The index, which is heavily weighted towards tech because of the massive market caps of the industry’s heavyweights, continues to add companies from across the sector. In September, Dell and defense software provider Palantir were added to the S&P 500, following artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer and security software vendor CrowdStrike earlier last year.

To join the S&P 500, a company must have reported a profit in its latest quarter and have cumulative profit over the four most recent quarters.

Coinbase last week reported net income of $65.6 million, or 24 cents a share, down from $1.18 billion, or $4.40 a share a year earlier, after accounting for the fair value of its crypto investments. Revenue rose 24% to $2.03 billion from $1.64 billion a year ago.

Also last week, Coinbase announced plans to buy Dubai-based Deribit, a major crypto derivatives exchange for $2.9 billion. The deal, which is the largest in the crypto industry to date, will help Coinbase broaden its footprint outside the U.S.

Coinbase shares are down 17% this year, underperforming bitcoin, which is now up about 10% over that stretch.

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Perplexity AI wrapping talks to raise $500 million at $14 billion valuation

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Perplexity AI wrapping talks to raise 0 million at  billion valuation

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Perplexity AI is in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC Monday.

Accel, the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, will lead the round, according to the source, who spoke anonymously because the round is not yet finalized. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the late-stage numbers.

The funding is on the lower end of Perplexity’s planned raise, which CNBC reported in March. During those early-stage talks, Perplexity was looking to raise between $500 million and $1 billion in funding at an $18 billion post-money valuation, per a source familiar.

The artificial intelligence search engine company competes against the likes of Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Its valuation in December was $9 billion, triple its $3 billion valuation in June 2024.

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Perplexity has just under $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, the source told CNBC in March.

Perplexity has been in the middle of the generative AI boom that began in late 2022 with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and it’s betting big on its upcoming AI agent web browser, called Comet. But Perplexity faces increasing competition in the AI search market.

In March, Anthropic launched its web search product, allowing its chatbot Claude to display real-time search results to a subset of users.

Last fall, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positioned it to better compete with Perplexity, as well as leading search engines such as Google and Microsoft‘s Bing.

Google has released AI Overviews within its search product as well, though it sparked controversy over high-profile errors soon after its release.

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Trump says he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after China tariff rollback

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Trump says he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after China tariff rollback

Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.

Shawn Thew | Afp | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said Monday that he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after the U.S. and China agreed to suspend most tariffs for 90 days.

Wall Street and Apple investors cheered the pause on Chinese tariffs. Apple stock was up 6% in trading on Monday, versus 3% for the Nasdaq.

“I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.”

Apple previously said in February it would spend $500 billion to expand many of its operations in the U.S., including assembling AI servers in Houston.

Any cooling of a U.S.-China trade war is expected to boost Apple, which does the majority of its device production in the country, and also counts the region as its third-largest by sales.

Read more CNBC tech news

Still, it’s not clear how much Monday’s announcement immediately helped Apple.

In April, most of Apple’s most important products, such as smartphones and computers, received exemptions on some of the highest 145% tariffs, but there are still 30% tariffs on Chinese imports even after Sunday’s deal. Apple still faces 10% tariffs in some of its secondary production locations, such as India and Vietnam.

The Trump administration wants Apple to bring device production, including iPhone manufacturing, to the United States, a move that many experts believe would be unlikely and expensive.

Earlier this month, Cook told investors about the company’s tariff strategy on an earnings call. He said that Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but didn’t want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation “difficult to predict.”

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

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