Who leads AI and technology at Capital One?
Richard Fairbank, who founded Capital One in 1987 and has been CEO since its initial public offering in November 1994, sets the frame: on the Q3 2026 call he said 'The objective function of the rebuild was AI'. Technology is run by Robert M. Alexander, Chief Information Officer since May 2007, and the enterprise functions around it by Frank LaPrade, Chief Enterprise Services Officer since 2010, whose remit covers Technology, Enterprise AI, Enterprise Data and Capital One Software, per the 2026 proxy statement. The AI organization was assembled in 2023: Amy Lenander became Chief Data Officer in February 2023; Prem Natarajan joined from Amazon in May 2023 as Chief Scientist and Head of Enterprise AI (Fortune called him chief enterprise AI officer and chief scientist in September 2026); and Milind Naphade joined the same month to build a new AI Foundations organization. Aparna Sinha joined as SVP and head of AI product in January 2024. Security and technology risk sit with CISO Chris Nims and Chief Technology Risk Officer Andy Ozment; Rashmi Shetty, VP of Enterprise AI, leads the engineering organization for enterprise AI platforms. Sanjiv Yajnik has run Financial Services, including Auto Finance, since June 2009, and Ravi Raghu became President, Capital One Software in March 2026. Capital One does not publish the size of its AI organization or a chart of who reports to whom.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
Data as of Nov 3, 2026 · Capital One profile updated Nov 2, 2026 · 25 sources cited on this page · 141 banks profiled on this site · Markdown
Who are Capital One's AI and technology leaders, and since when?
Titles as the cited source gives them on its date. 'Since' is filled only where a source states when the person took the role; Capital One does not publish start dates for several of these roles.
| Name | Role | Since | What the record says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Richard D. Fairbank | Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer | CEO since November 1994; Chairman since February 1995 | Founded Capital One in 1987 'on the belief that data and technology could change how banking works'; on the Q3 2026 call: 'we did not predict generative AI, and we did not predict agentic AI, yet AI was the objective function of this transformation'[1][2] |
| Robert M. Alexander | Chief Information Officer | May 2007 (joined April 1998) | 'Responsible for overseeing all technology activities for Capital One'; the 10-K says he has overseen multiple technology transformation initiatives, including the transition to the public cloud, and reviews technology strategy with the Board at least annually[1][9] |
| Frank G. LaPrade, III | Chief Enterprise Services Officer and Chief of Staff to the CEO | 2010 (Chief of Staff since 2004) | Manages Enterprise Services, including Technology, Enterprise Product Management, Design, Enterprise AI, Enterprise Data, Capital One Software and Growth Ventures[1] |
| Prem Natarajan | EVP, Chief Scientist and Head of Enterprise AI | May 2023 | Joined after five years as a VP at Amazon leading the Alexa AI organization; leads technology strategy, architecture and development for enterprise data, analytics and machine learning; described as chief enterprise AI officer and chief scientist in 2026[12][4][13][5] |
| Milind Naphade | SVP, Technology, and Head of AI Foundations | May 2023 | Hired to create the new AI Foundations organization; launched the Applied Research job family and an Applied Research PhD internship program; earlier at IBM Research, NVIDIA and Cisco[6] |
| Amy Lenander | EVP and Chief Data Officer | February 2023 | About 20 years at Capital One before the role, including heading the U.K. business; leads the central enterprise data team; 'building a unified data ecosystem creates a competitive moat' (October 2026)[3][14] |
| Aparna Sinha | SVP and head of AI product | January 2024 | A veteran of Google Cloud's developer organization; partners with the lines of business and builds and operates the bank's AI and machine learning platform (as of July 2024)[7] |
| Chris Nims | EVP, Chief Information Security Officer | Not stated | The 10-K says the CISO has more than 30 years of cybersecurity and IT experience, including nearly five years as CISO at a major global technology company; in August 2022 he was EVP of Cloud & Productivity Engineering; explained the July 2026 decision to open-source VulnHunter[9][8] |
| Andy Ozment | EVP, Chief Technology Risk Officer | Not stated | The 10-K says the CTRO has been in cybersecurity for approximately 25 years and spent over three years as the global CISO of a G-SIB after serving as a senior executive in cybersecurity in the U.S. government; presented passwordless employee authentication at RSAC 2025 and fraudulent remote workers at RSAC 2026[9][15][10] |
| Rashmi Shetty | VP of Enterprise AI | Not stated | Leads the engineering organization for enterprise platforms, putting generative and agentic AI applications into the retail bank, risk, legal and compliance (September 2026)[11] |
| Sanjiv Yajnik | President, Financial Services | June 2009 (joined July 1998) | Oversees Auto Finance, whose Chat Concierge and ProtectID won 2026 BIG Innovation Awards[1][16] |
| Ravi Raghu | President, Capital One Software | March 2026 | Responsible for the enterprise B2B software business that sells Slingshot and Databolt; head of Capital One Software since July 2021[1] |
How is Capital One's AI organization structured, and how has it changed?
2023 was the build year. Amy Lenander became Chief Data Officer in February 2023. Capital One announced Prem Natarajan as Chief Scientist and Head of Enterprise AI on May 24, 2023; he told VentureBeat his top priority was to keep building a 'world-class' AI organization. Milind Naphade joined in May 2023 with a mandate to 'create a completely new organization', AI Foundations, meant to be central to inventing the AI technology that all lines of business use.[3][12][4][6]
2024 filled it out. Banking Dive reported in July 2024 that Capital One had bulked up its AI team over the past year, adding Aparna Sinha in January to run AI product and the AI and machine learning platform. Naphade said in June 2024 that AI Foundations had launched an Applied Research job family and a PhD internship program and opened working space in San Jose.[7][6]
Reporting lines are partly on the record. The 2026 proxy statement places Technology, Enterprise AI, Enterprise Data and Capital One Software within Frank LaPrade's Enterprise Services, alongside the CIO, Rob Alexander, as a separate executive officer; Natarajan, Naphade and Lenander are not among the executive officers it lists. For cybersecurity and technology risk the 10-K sets out three lines of defense: the CISO and CIO in the first, the CTRO in the second and Internal Audit in the third. The Board's Risk Committee has held education sessions on generative artificial intelligence.[1][9]
2025 and 2026 widened the base and the titles. The Discover acquisition added more than 2,200 AI professionals, per Evident's 2025 report. By September 2026 Fortune was describing Natarajan as chief enterprise AI officer and chief scientist, and in March 2026 Ravi Raghu's role narrowed to President, Capital One Software. The 2026 proxy statement's review of 2025 performance lists investment in 'talent and tools to deliver top tier software development, rigorous risk management, and artificial intelligence' capabilities.[17][5][1]
Not disclosed: the headcount of the AI organization, to whom Natarajan reports, budgets for AI, or start dates for the CISO, the CTRO and the VP of Enterprise AI. Capital One's own leadership pages and filings name the people above; no organization chart is published.[1][9]
What does the Capital One profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Capital One AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Nov 2, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 50 dated moves, 13 use cases and 80 sources.
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 28, 2026 | MIT Sloan Management Review: audit assistant cut quality errors 85% | Davenport and Bean report an AI-enabled assistant for audit, risk and compliance that cut quality errors by 85% and saved an estimated 5,000 hours of audit time across 30 auditors in a few months, with one task falling from five hours to three minutes; Natarajan: 'You can't achieve transformation if you're focused on quarterly ROI.' | [14] |
| Oct 22, 2026 | Natarajan at Evident symposium: distilled models cut Chat Concierge latency fivefold | Natarajan said the bank distilled its fine-tuned open-weight models into smaller models that support Chat Concierge; latency fell five times and dealership customer engagement rose 50%. On data: 'We have copious amounts of well-managed, well-curated data'; where architecture limits what is possible, 'We go back and we rebuild from the bottom up.' | [18] |
| Oct 20, 2026 | Q3 2026 call: Fairbank says the rebuild's 'objective function' was AI | Fairbank says 'The pace of advancement in AI is just breathtaking', that the technology rebuild's objective function was AI although 'we did not predict generative AI, and we did not predict agentic AI', that reinventing how work is done with AI 'is going to need modern tech stack', that the bank uses 'AI-based monitoring that is full file' in credit (still early days), that 'we know there's a big investment imperative', and that 100% of Discover Card originations were on Capital One's tech stack by the end of September. | [19] |
| Sep 29, 2026 | Natarajan: cutting latency and token costs with smaller, open-weight models | Chief enterprise AI officer Prem Natarajan says the bank has put more emphasis on agentic AI infrastructure to reduce latency and lower token costs, building customised open-weight and specialised models with less context targeted at the desired output; customer-service agents now edit only one-fifth of AI-drafted copy. | [5] |
| Sep 28, 2026 | Shetty: 'agentic AI now must be treated as an end-to-end system' | VP of enterprise AI Rashmi Shetty says 14 years of data-infrastructure work gives agents a strong foundation and context, and that the bank adopts platform-first governance — rule-based validation, sandbox simulations, observability of agent trajectories, standardised harnesses and human-in-the-loop controls for high-risk actions — before developers build agents, rather than retrofitting it later. | [11] |
| Jul 16, 2026 | VulnHunter open-sourced | An internally built agentic AI code-security tool released on GitHub under Apache 2.0; the CISO cites the brief window before AI attack tools spread. | [8] |
| Apr 21, 2026 | Q1 2026 call: AI leverage is 'vastly greater' when embedded | Fairbank: 14th year of the technology transformation; continued investment in AI infrastructure and specific AI experiences. | [20] |
| Mar 17, 2026 | 'Building AI moats': the chief scientist on Bloomberg | Why the bank builds rather than buys its AI stack; AI as a capacity multiplier. | [21] |
| Jan 22, 2026 | Q4 2025 call: a stack built 'working backwards from the AI revolution' | Fairbank says the bank is 'now building AI solutions across our businesses' and that Brex has deployed in-house AI agents for expense management and audit. | [22] |
| Oct 21, 2025 | Q3 2025 call: AI 'deeply embedded', not bolted on | Fairbank: AI-driven experiences are 'a new front' in premium cards; the opportunities require 'significant investment in AI and AI talent'. | [23] |
| Jul 2, 2025 | How the dealer agents were built | At VB Transform, Naphade describes an evaluator agent trained on the bank's policies and a 55% lift in dealers' engagement and serious-lead metrics. | [24] |
| Jun 4, 2025 | ASKS Center for generative-AI safety at Illinois | Capital One and the University of Illinois launch the Center for Generative AI Safety, Knowledge Systems and Cybersecurity; AI Foundations SVP Milind Naphade among its contributors. | [25] |
Who makes up Capital One's AI leadership and technology leadership?
CEO Richard Fairbank sets the direction; Robert M. Alexander has been Chief Information Officer since May 2007; Frank LaPrade, Chief Enterprise Services Officer, oversees Technology, Enterprise AI, Enterprise Data and Capital One Software; Prem Natarajan is EVP, Chief Scientist and Head of Enterprise AI; Milind Naphade heads AI Foundations; Amy Lenander is Chief Data Officer; Chris Nims is CISO and Andy Ozment Chief Technology Risk Officer; Rashmi Shetty is VP of Enterprise AI.
Who is in charge of AI at Capital One?
Prem Natarajan, who joined from Amazon in May 2023 as EVP, Chief Scientist and Head of Enterprise AI and was described by Fortune in September 2026 as chief enterprise AI officer and chief scientist. He leads technology strategy, architecture and development for enterprise data, analytics and machine learning. Milind Naphade, SVP, runs AI Foundations, including Applied Research, and Rashmi Shetty leads engineering for the enterprise AI platforms.
When did Capital One create its enterprise AI organization?
The current structure dates from 2023. Amy Lenander became Chief Data Officer in February 2023, Capital One announced Prem Natarajan as Chief Scientist and Head of Enterprise AI on May 24, 2023, and Milind Naphade joined in May 2023 to create the new AI Foundations organization. Aparna Sinha followed as SVP and head of AI product in January 2024, and the Applied Research job family and PhD internship program launched by mid-2024.
How does Richard Fairbank talk about AI?
As the purpose of Capital One's long technology rebuild. On the Q3 2026 earnings call he said 'The objective function of the rebuild was AI', that 'we did not predict generative AI, and we did not predict agentic AI', and that the pace of advancement in AI is 'just breathtaking'. He founded the company in 1987 on the belief that data and technology could change how banking works, per the 2026 proxy statement.
Who oversees AI risk and cybersecurity at Capital One?
Under the 10-K's three lines of defense, the Chief Information Security Officer, Chris Nims, runs the enterprise-wide cybersecurity program, and the Chief Information Officer, Rob Alexander, oversees governance in each business area; the Chief Technology Risk Officer, Andy Ozment, provides independent second-line oversight; Internal Audit is the third line. The Board reviews the cybersecurity program with the CISO and CTRO at least annually, and its Risk Committee has had education sessions on generative AI.
- Capital One Financial Corporation 2026 Proxy Statement (DEF 14A)
- Capital One (COF) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
- Getting to know Amy Lenander, Chief Data Officer
- Capital One's new chief scientist says 'responsible, thoughtful' generative AI is key
- How bottom-line-focused financial firms are finding ROI in AI
- Meet Milind Naphade, Capital One's SVP of AI Foundations
- Capital One leans on its cloud maturity to support AI adoption
- Capital One releases VulnHunter, an open-source AI tool that finds software flaws before hackers do
- Capital One Financial Corporation Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2025
- How North Korean operatives infiltrate US bank payrolls
- Capital One's agentic AI strategy hinges on data, platform-first mindset
- Introducing Prem Natarajan
- Prem Natarajan On Leading AI Innovation At Capital One
- AI Is Thriving at Capital One
- How Capital One is eliminating passwords for its employees
- Capital One Auto earns two 2026 BIG Innovation Awards (Chat Concierge and ProtectID)
- BofA, Capital One, Citi lead charge to scale AI talent pool
- Smaller AI models help Bank of America, Capital One manage costs
- Capital One (COF) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
- Capital One (COF) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript
- Capital One on Building AI Moats in Banking (Tech Disruptors)
- Capital One (COF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
- Capital One (COF) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript
- Capital One builds agentic AI to supercharge auto sales
- Capital One and University of Illinois launch ASKS Center
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