# Huntington Bancshares: Proprietary AI

Source: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/huntington/proprietary-ai
Last updated: Oct 22, 2026

*Part of the [Huntington Bancshares AI strategy profile](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/huntington).*

## What proprietary AI has Huntington built in-house?

Huntington builds a minority of its AI itself and says so. CFO Zach Wasserman told American Banker in September 2025 that about 80% of the time the bank relies on technology partners such as Salesforce and Microsoft, and the other 20% of the time its programmers create bespoke models. What it builds is mostly agents: two in the fourth quarter of 2022, then 50 in production and more than 60 in development by April 2026, with roughly 15 new ones entering the pipeline each month. They include finance agents for SEC reporting, tax filing and the data behind more than 200 regulatory reports a year, and servicing tools that summarize past customer interactions, trigger escalation protocols and check proposed fixes against policy. The first customer-facing product built this way is The 1866 Studio, announced October 19, 2026: an AI operating system for small businesses, open to non-customers, built with Google Cloud's Gemini platform and powered at launch by roughly six trained AI agents. Traditional machine learning has run for several years in credit pricing, behavioral analysis and next-best-product recommendations. The work sits in a federated model of a central team plus 13 business-focused teams stood up over about 18 months. Huntington has not described a foundation model of its own and does not name the models behind its agents. ([American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai), [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/), [Huntington](https://ir.huntington.com/news-presentations/press-releases/detail/1028/huntington-bank-introduces-the-1866-studio-an-ai-powered-small-business-operating-system-built-with-google-cloud), [Banking Dive](https://www.bankingdive.com/news/huntington-launches-small-biz-operating-platform/833339/))

## Which AI systems has Huntington built, and what are they built on?

Systems Huntington describes as its own, plus two vendor products for contrast. 'Built on' is what the bank or its partner has said; 'not disclosed' means no source names it.

| Platform or model | What it does | Built on | Since | Status | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The 1866 Studio | AI operating system for small-business owners: agentic workflows for business launch (entity selection, registration, licensing), marketing and campaign creation and loan readiness, plus an AI assistant that monitors operations and finances; the base level is open to owners who do not bank with Huntington | Google Cloud's platform to build, scale, govern and optimize agents, and Google's multimodal Gemini models; roughly six trained AI agents at launch | October 19, 2026 | Early-access sign-ups | [Huntington](https://ir.huntington.com/news-presentations/press-releases/detail/1028/huntington-bank-introduces-the-1866-studio-an-ai-powered-small-business-operating-system-built-with-google-cloud), [Banking Dive](https://www.bankingdive.com/news/huntington-launches-small-biz-operating-platform/833339/) |
| Agent portfolio | AI agents, 'discrete programs running inside the business' | Not disclosed | Two agents in Q4 2022 | 50 in production, more than 60 in development, about 15 new a month (April 2026) | [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/) |
| Finance-team agents | SEC reporting, tax filing and data management supporting over 200 regulatory reports a year | Not disclosed | By April 2026 | In production | [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/) |
| Servicing and exceptions-handling tools | Summarize the situation and earlier conversations with a customer, trigger escalation protocols, and assess recommended servicing solutions against standardized policies | Large language models and agentic tools; models not named | Described September 2025 | In use | [American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai) |
| Bespoke models | The share of AI not delivered by partners: 'the other 20% of the time its programmers create bespoke models' | In-house | Described September 2025 | In use | [American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai) |
| Traditional machine learning | Pricing credit, behavioral analysis and next-best-product recommendations | Not disclosed | 'For several years' before 2025 | In use | [American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai) |
| Conversion automation tools | 'AI-enabled tools to automate a number of the manual processes' in the Cadence conversion, completed 235 days after announcement | Not disclosed | 2026 | Used | [Investing.com](https://investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-transcript-huntington-bancshares-tops-q2-2026-estimates-shares-fall-93CH-4809465) |
| Huntington Heads Up (vendor) | 14 million curated insights a month across 96 use cases | Personetics software | Described March 2025 | In production | [Personetics](https://personetics.com/huntington-bank-a-masterclass-in-data-enrichment-and-customer-engagement) |
| Embedded copilots (vendor) | General employee productivity, the next biggest generative-AI area after software development | Copilots embedded in Salesforce and Microsoft enterprise software | Described September 2025 | In use | [American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai) |

## Who builds AI at Huntington?

The CFO runs it. 'I'm actually leading the AI effort for the company,' Zach Wasserman told Fortune in April 2026. He described a federated model: a central team sets strategy and handles advanced applications, paired with resources embedded in each business segment, and over the previous year and a half Huntington had stood up 13 teams focused on discrete parts of the business, driving data analytics and AI use cases. ([Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/))

In a September 2025 interview Wasserman said Huntington invests in three areas: the analytics teams that deploy and create generative AI, the business teams that ideate use cases and re-engineer processes around them, and the support and risk-management teams that oversee the work. A typical AI deployment, he said, changes 10% to 20% of someone's role. ([The Wall Street Journal (Deloitte CFO Journal)](https://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/banking-on-ai-huntingtons-cfo-on-innovation-and-risk-oversight-80b35afb))

The 1866 Studio is presented by Vijay Konduru, head of innovation and AI products, who said it is 'designed around the small business jobs to be done'. Banking Dive reported that Huntington saw the opportunity to use its own technical expertise and technical resources to build agentic tools for small-business customers, and that president Brant Standridge expects the number of agents, and the complexity of their tasks, to grow. ([Huntington](https://ir.huntington.com/news-presentations/press-releases/detail/1028/huntington-bank-introduces-the-1866-studio-an-ai-powered-small-business-operating-system-built-with-google-cloud), [Banking Dive](https://www.bankingdive.com/news/huntington-launches-small-biz-operating-platform/833339/))

## How does Huntington decide what to build and what to buy?

Vendor first by design. Wasserman said in September 2025 that 'a majority of the AI that we deploy, perhaps as much as 80%, will be provided through a vendor suite', which 'leaves just a small subset of solutions that we need to create internally ourselves'; the skill he stresses is learning to harness and extend what vendors provide. ([The Wall Street Journal (Deloitte CFO Journal)](https://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/banking-on-ai-huntingtons-cfo-on-innovation-and-risk-oversight-80b35afb))

The named partners are Salesforce ('a major partner') and Microsoft, plus all three major clouds: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Much of the generative AI used for employee productivity is the copilots embedded in that enterprise software. ([American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai))

Even what Huntington builds runs on vendor models. The 1866 Studio combines Huntington's small-business expertise with Google's Gemini models and agent platform, and extends a multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud; Google's Rohit Bhat said Huntington was 'using Gemini platform and Gemini frontier models to build The 1866 Studio'. Google announced the launch the same day. ([Huntington](https://ir.huntington.com/news-presentations/press-releases/detail/1028/huntington-bank-introduces-the-1866-studio-an-ai-powered-small-business-operating-system-built-with-google-cloud), [PYMNTS](https://www.pymnts.com/news/banking/2026/google-helps-huntington-bank-deploy-ai-powered-operating-system/))

## What has Huntington not disclosed about its in-house AI?

No foundation model, model gateway or named internal AI platform appears in the sources reviewed. Huntington has not said which models power its 50 production agents, how many people work in the central AI team or the 13 business-focused teams, or what The 1866 Studio costs beyond a base level open to all small-business owners. No usage figures for The 1866 Studio exist yet; sign-ups opened on October 19, 2026. ([Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/), [Banking Dive](https://www.bankingdive.com/news/huntington-launches-small-biz-operating-platform/833339/), [Huntington](https://ir.huntington.com/news-presentations/press-releases/detail/1028/huntington-bank-introduces-the-1866-studio-an-ai-powered-small-business-operating-system-built-with-google-cloud))

Huntington does patent machine-learning methods: assignment records on Google Patents name The Huntington National Bank on grants such as US12602693B2, fraud detection using byte pair encoding (April 14, 2026). The bank has not tied any of these patents to a named product; they are covered on the research and patents page. ([Google Patents (USPTO)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US12602693B2/en))

## What does the Huntington profile record on this topic?

| Date | Move | Detail | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Sep 25, 2026 | Vakharia on AI in bank marketing | The new chief marketing and digital products officer says customer research is moving to large language models and agentic AI, and that marketing uses AI tools internally for creative development, reviews and workflow. | [Banking Dive](https://bankingdive.com/news/huntington-bank-marketing-digital-brand-customer-experience-vakharia/831361) |
| Jul 23, 2026 | Q2 call: Cadence converted in 235 days with AI-enabled tools | Standridge says the conversion used 'AI-enabled tools to automate a number of the manual processes' and moved 4,500 colleagues, and that pricing analytics let the bank optimise rates at local-market level. | [Investing.com](https://investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-transcript-huntington-bancshares-tops-q2-2026-estimates-shares-fall-93CH-4809465) |
| Jul 20, 2026 | Euromoney names Huntington the US best digital bank for consumers | The release credits the mobile app, The Hub, Huntington Heads Up, Teen Banking and Caregiver Banking for personalised guidance in the app. | [Huntington](https://ir.huntington.com/news-presentations/press-releases/detail/1004/huntington-bank-named-the-united-states-best-digital-bank-for-consumers) |
| Apr 24, 2026 | 50 agents in production, 60-plus in development | About 15 new agents a month; the CFO as AI strategist. | [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/) |
| Apr 23, 2026 | Q1 call: about $50 million of expense tuning, agentic momentum | The CFO says the baseline expense action is about $50 million and that management is accelerating efficiency programmes, with encouraging momentum 'particularly in agentic process transformation'. | [earnings call transcript (The Motley Fool)](https://fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/05/04/huntington-hban-q1-2026-earnings-transcript) |
| Oct 27, 2025 | Fintech venture studio with Alloy Partners | 'It's not just about keeping pace, it's about setting the pace' — acting 'more like a tech company'. | [American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-bank-launches-fintech-venture-studio) |
| Sep 11, 2025 | 28 generative-AI use cases live, target 100 | The CFO says software development is the furthest-advanced use, that technology investment has grown at a 25% compound rate against 5% for total expenses over five years, and that agentic AI is used in software development, employee productivity, customer service and marketing. | [American Banker](https://www.americanbanker.com/news/huntington-banks-plan-to-obtain-a-return-on-generative-ai) |
| Mar 27, 2025 | Heads Up: 14 million insights a month | Joe Proudfoot, SVP of digital product and capabilities, describes Huntington Heads Up delivering 14 million curated insights a month across 96 use cases at a 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction rating, with a migration to Personetics' SaaS platform under way. | [Personetics](https://personetics.com/huntington-bank-a-masterclass-in-data-enrichment-and-customer-engagement) |
| Dec 31, 2022 | Two AI agents in production | The baseline Wasserman later cites for the agentic build-out. | [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/huntington-bancshares-cfo-ai-strategist/) |

## Common questions

### Does Huntington build its own AI models?

Some. CFO Zach Wasserman said in September 2025 that about 80% of the time Huntington relies on technology partners such as Salesforce and Microsoft, and the other 20% of the time its programmers create bespoke models. Most of what it builds are AI agents: 50 in production and more than 60 in development by April 2026. It has not described a foundation model of its own.

### What is The 1866 Studio?

An AI operating system for small-business owners that Huntington announced on October 19, 2026, named for the year the bank was founded. It offers agentic workflows for launching a business, creating marketing campaigns and preparing for loans, plus an AI assistant for monitoring operations and finances. It is built with Google Cloud's Gemini platform, runs roughly six trained agents at launch, and its base level is open to owners who do not bank with Huntington.

### How many AI agents does Huntington run?

Fifty in production and more than 60 in development as of April 2026, up from two in the fourth quarter of 2022, with roughly 15 new agents entering the pipeline each month, according to CFO Zach Wasserman. They include finance agents for SEC reporting, tax filing and data behind more than 200 regulatory reports a year. The 1866 Studio adds roughly six customer-facing agents.

### Who leads AI at Huntington?

Chief financial officer Zach Wasserman, who told Fortune in April 2026 that he is 'leading the AI effort for the company'. A central team sets strategy and handles advanced applications, with resources embedded in each business segment and 13 business-focused teams stood up over about 18 months. Vijay Konduru, head of innovation and AI products, speaks for The 1866 Studio.

### Which AI vendors does Huntington use?

Salesforce and Microsoft are the named major partners, mostly through copilots embedded in their enterprise software, and Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are its clouds. The 1866 Studio is built on Google's Gemini models and agent platform. Huntington Heads Up, which delivers 14 million insights a month, runs on Personetics software.
## Deeper on Huntington

- [What is Huntington's AI strategy and who runs it?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/huntington/ai-strategy)
- [What AI patents and partnerships does Huntington have?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/huntington/ai-research-patents-partnerships)
- [How does Huntington govern and control its use of AI?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/huntington/responsible-ai)
- [What technology stack does Huntington run?](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/huntington/technology-stack)


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