How is AI changing Citi's workforce?
Citi has made AI use a requirement and is shrinking at the same time. On September 30, 2025 a memo from Tim Ryan and Anand Selva sent mandatory 'Prompting like a Pro' training to 175,000 employees in 80 locations, to be completed within 60 days; staff had already entered more than 6.5 million prompts that year. By July 2026 Jane Fraser said 'nearly nine out of ten of our people are using our AI tools', and in October 2026 Citi said nearly 180,000 colleagues in 87 jurisdictions had access to Citi Stylus Workspaces, Citi Assist and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Among engineers, about 14,000 use Cognition's Devin, and Fraser linked in-sourcing to a 30% year-on-year cut in technology vendor spend. Headcount fell from approximately 239,000 at the end of 2023 to 229,000 at end-2024, 226,000 at end-2025 and 219,000 by mid-2026, with more than $800 million of severance in the first half of 2026. Fraser told staff in January 2026 that automation and AI mean some roles 'will no longer be required', within a restructuring reported to cut about 20,000 roles. Her framing for staff is: 'someone using AI is going to probably be better at your job than you are.' Citi has not said how many roles AI itself has removed.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Data as of Oct 31, 2026 · Citi profile updated Oct 26, 2026 · 30 sources cited on this page · 141 banks profiled on this site · Markdown
How has Citi's headcount changed as it adopted AI?
Year-end figures are full-time employees from the 10-K; mid-year figures are from calls and press. Much of the 2020-2022 increase was transformation staff hired after the consent orders.
| As of | Headcount | What was said | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 2020 to Q4 2022 | From 210,000 to 240,000 | Growth driven by transformation hiring, from data experts to project managers, after the 2020 orders | eFinancialCareers[8] |
| December 31, 2023 | Approximately 239,000 in over 90 countries | More than 38,000 external hires in 2023, plus 44,600 roles filled internally | 2023 10-K[6] |
| December 31, 2024 | Approximately 229,000 | Prior-year comparison in the 2025 10-K | 2025 10-K[7] |
| December 31, 2025 | Approximately 226,000; about 31% in the U.S. | 2025 10-K human capital section | 2025 10-K[7] |
| January 14, 2026 | About 1,000 cuts that week | Fraser memo: 'the bar is raised'; some roles 'will no longer be required'; plan reported at about 20,000 roles by 2026 | Fortune (via Bloomberg)[9] |
| Q2 2026 | 219,000 | More than $800 million of severance year to date; CFO Gonzalo Luchetti expects productivity saves from technology and AI over time | Q2 2026 call; eFinancialCareers[2][8] |
How does Citi train employees to use AI, and how many use it?
| Program or measure | What it is | Scale | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asking Smart Questions - Prompting like a Pro | Mandatory adaptive prompt training: under 10 minutes for experts, about 30 for beginners; head of learning Peter Fox: 'great prompting versus basic prompting' | 175,000 employees in 80 locations, 60 days to complete | September 30, 2025[1] |
| AI Champions and AI Accelerators | Volunteer networks that support adoption and feed back on the tools | More than 2,000 (June 2025); about 4,000 accelerators across the five businesses (October 2025) | 2025[11][12] |
| Enterprise AI tools | Citi Stylus Workspaces, Citi Assist and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat | Nearly 180,000 colleagues in 87 jurisdictions | October 20, 2026[3] |
| Adoption | 'Nearly nine out of ten of our people are using our AI tools' | Firmwide | July 14, 2026[2] |
| Agentic coding | Cognition's Devin offered to the developer population; in-sourcing cut technology vendor spend 30% year on year | About 14,000 engineers using it (40,000 developers in scope in 2025) | July 2025; October 2026[13][5] |
How is Citi hiring and organizing AI talent?
Senior AI hiring has come largely from Big Tech: Shobhit Varshney from IBM as head of AI in September 2025 (he left in April 2026), Brian Saluzzo from Google as chief information officer in 2026, and Sebastian Gnagnarella, previously director of engineering at Google, as head of applied AI and agent factory in October 2026. David Griffiths, formerly CTO, is group head of AI.[14][15][16][4]
Talent also flows the other way: workforce-analytics firm Draup told American Banker that Citi had recently lost five AI and data science leaders to Microsoft and three to Google, and that AI-related job postings across banking rose 49% year on year while overall hiring was flat.[4]
Fraser's stated aim is to 'stack the odds that we will help our people reinvent themselves', telling staff in January 2026: 'Not that AI is going to take your job away, but someone using AI is going to probably be better at your job than you are.' Not disclosed: AI headcount, the size of the groupwide AI team, training completion rates, or which cuts AI caused.[10][4]
What does the Citi profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Citi AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 26, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 48 dated moves, 21 use cases and 68 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citi Sky | AI wealth advisor for Citigold clients, phased US rollout from summer 2026; demonstrated handling CD renewals, college-fund checks and mortgage-refinancing prompts as an 'always-on' member of the Citi Wealth team. | Rolling out | [17][18][19] |
| Arc enterprise agent platform | Platform for building and scaling AI agents under one governance framework, starting with developers' internal use cases such as research and client preparation. | Rolling out | [20][21][22] |
| Google Cloud, DeepMind and Cognition partnerships | Citi Sky built on Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and DeepMind avatar technology; Cognition's Devin coding agent used to remap legacy code; relationships with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. | In production | [23][21] |
| Devin coding agents and AI code review | Cognition's Devin rolled out to Citi's 40,000 developers from July 2025 for patches, upgrades and language rewrites; agents read only internal repositories and humans approve every change. Citi says AI-assisted code reviews free about 100,000 hours of capacity a week. | In production | [13][24] |
| Mandatory AI training and accelerator network | 175,000 staff in 80 locations had 60 days to complete 'Prompting like a Pro'; about 4,000 AI accelerators across the five businesses support adoption. | In production | [1][12] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 22, 2026 | Group Head of AI profile: 65 million interactions | The bank says Stylus Workspaces has reached more than 180,000 people with 87%-plus adoption, AI cut US client-onboarding document review from about an hour to 15 minutes, and Citi takes part in Anthropic's Project Glasswing. | [21] |
| Jul 16, 2026 | Headcount at 219,000; 7,000 fewer since Q4 2025 | Of the reduction, 5,000 fell in the second quarter; severance over $800 million year to date. Citi says it is investing in AI '100% on the offense'. | [8][2] |
| Jul 14, 2026 | Q2 2026 call: nearly nine in ten use AI tools | Fraser: AI is helping bring products such as Payments Express and Citi Wealth Advisor Insights to market faster; the CFO cites more than 100 processes mapped end to end for automation and headcount down to 219,000. | [2][25] |
| May 1, 2026 | Arc agent platform launched | A platform for building and scaling AI agents, first for developers' internal use cases, then in everyday workflows; 'for the first time, we can deploy embedded AI agents at enterprise scale', said then-CTO David Griffiths. | [20] |
| Apr 14, 2026 | Q1 deck: 80%+ adoption, 42 million interactions | The bank reports 'the benefits of an AI-ready organization, reengineering our enterprise at scale'. | [26] |
| Jan 27, 2026 | Fraser: AI 'will take some jobs away' | Fraser tells the Washington Post at Davos that AI will create new jobs, change what people do and take some away; Citi is putting 175,000 staff through AI training so they can 'reinvent themselves'. | [10] |
| Jan 14, 2026 | Fraser memo: about 1,000 cuts, 'bar is raised' | Fortune reports about 1,000 further job cuts within a multiyear plan reported at up to 20,000 roles, with automation and AI meaning some roles 'will no longer be required'. | [9] |
| Jan 14, 2026 | Q4 2025 call: 21 million interactions, 50 processes to re-engineer | Colleagues in 84 countries have used the proprietary tools more than 21 million times, with adoption above 70%; AI and automation are applied first to 'just over 50' of the largest, most complex processes, from KYC to loan underwriting. | [27] |
| Nov 20, 2025 | Deploying agents 'without upsetting humans' | CIO Nikhil Joshi on reskilling and adoption: 'You must take people along'. | [28] |
| Sep 30, 2025 | Mandatory prompt training for 175,000 staff | Memo from Tim Ryan and Anand Selva requires 'Prompting like a Pro' within 60 days; staff had entered more than 6.5 million prompts in Citi AI tools that year. | [1] |
| Sep 22, 2025 | Stylus Workspaces goes agentic | A 5,000-user pilot of agentic AI inside Stylus Workspaces, running on Gemini and Claude models; Griffiths on headcount: 'Does it mean that we need less people? I don't know.' | [29][30] |
| Jul 14, 2025 | Devin coding agents for 40,000 developers | Citi begins rolling out Cognition's Devin to automate software patches, upgrades and language rewrites; agents work only from internal repositories and humans approve all output. Citi Squad had completed 740,000 automated code reviews, about 100,000 hours a week saved. | [13] |
Is Citi cutting jobs because of AI?
Partly, by Citi's own account. Jane Fraser's January 2026 memo said technology and process simplification, including automation and AI, mean some roles 'will no longer be required', within a restructuring reported to cut about 20,000 roles by 2026. Headcount fell to 219,000 by mid-2026 with more than $800 million of severance in the first half; many cuts fall on transformation staff hired after the 2020 consent orders. Citi has not quantified AI-driven cuts.
Does Citi require employees to take AI training?
Yes. A September 30, 2025 memo required 175,000 employees in 80 locations to complete 'Asking Smart Questions - Prompting like a Pro' within 60 days; it adapts to the user and takes under 10 minutes for experts and about 30 for beginners. Fraser said in January 2026 that mandatory training removes 'the myths of intimidation' around the tools.
How many Citi employees use AI?
Fraser said on the July 14, 2026 call that 'nearly nine out of ten of our people are using our AI tools'. In October 2026 Citi said nearly 180,000 colleagues in 87 jurisdictions had access to Citi Stylus Workspaces, Citi Assist and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, and about 14,000 engineers use Cognition's Devin for agentic coding.
How many employees does Citi have?
Approximately 226,000 full-time employees at December 31, 2025, about 31% in the U.S., per the 2025 10-K, down from about 229,000 a year earlier and 239,000 at the end of 2023. CFO Gonzalo Luchetti put headcount at 219,000 in the second quarter of 2026.
Is Citi hiring for AI roles?
Yes, mostly senior and engineering roles. Recent leadership hires came from IBM and Google, and BankingNewsAI's weekly read of Citi's careers site on October 27, 2026 listed roles such as head of AI solutions for the COO technology group, principal AI architect, forward deployed AI engineers, AI security and AI quality and safety engineers; the current list is on the Citi profile. Postings change weekly and are not cited as sources.
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