What is Santander's technology stack?
Banco Santander runs on Gravity, a core banking platform it built in-house for the cloud. Gravity is also the migration software: it lets the bank run workloads on its core banking mainframe and in the cloud in parallel, test in real time, then switch. Santander said in July 2025 that it had migrated more than 90% of its IT to the cloud. Spain completed its move on 19 June 2025, when Santander described itself as becoming the first major established bank in the Western world to operate 100% in the cloud, and Santander México followed on 18 November 2025. Santander CIB has run on Gravity in Google Cloud since December 2023, and Google Cloud sells the approach to other companies as Dual Run. On top sits a multi-provider AI layer: Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini for employees, and open-weight models evaluated and served inside Santander's own architecture with NVIDIA tooling. In June 2026 Santander said 40% of all code was developed by AI.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Data as of Nov 11, 2026 · Santander profile updated Nov 1, 2026 · 19 sources cited on this page · 141 banks profiled on this site · Markdown
What are the layers of Santander's technology stack?
As Santander describes them in its own releases and results calls. These are group platforms rolled out country by country.
| Layer | What is on the record | Vendor | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core banking | Gravity is Santander's in-house core banking cloud platform and the software that moves the core from mainframe to the cloud, running workloads on the mainframe and in the cloud in parallel for real-time testing | In-house | July 2025[1] |
| Cloud share | More than 90% of IT migrated to the cloud | Not named | July 2025[1] |
| Spain | All core technology infrastructure migrated to Gravity; Santander describes itself as becoming the first major established bank in the Western world to operate 100% in the cloud | In-house | June 19, 2025[2] |
| Mexico | Santander México became the first systemic bank in Mexico to migrate the entirety of its technology infrastructure to Gravity, with over 1,500 specialists involved | In-house | November 18, 2025[3] |
| Corporate and investment banking | Santander CIB used Gravity to migrate to Google Cloud, where it manages more than a million accounting operations and half a million treasury operations per day; Gravity deploys on private and public clouds | Google Cloud | December 11, 2023[4] |
| Dual Run | A mainframe migration service from Google Cloud, based on Santander's Gravity technology and offered to other companies | Google Cloud | December 2023[4] |
| Customer platforms | The new app is live in five countries and the customer interaction platform is available in six following its rollout in Spain | In-house | October 28, 2026[7] |
| Employee AI tools | Microsoft Copilot for everyday productivity, plus a multi-provider approach that includes OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini; AI access for 185,000 employees | Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google | June 2026[5] |
| Model evaluation and serving | Santander AI Lab built Model Arena to evaluate open-weight models against banking tasks, specialises models with NVIDIA NeMo Customizer and runs inference within Santander's own architecture using NVIDIA Dynamo-Triton, under a three-year framework | NVIDIA | October 19, 2026[6] |
| Software development | Over 17,000 people working with agentic AI in software development in May 2026; 40% of all code in June developed by AI | Not named | June 2026[5] |
How big is Santander's technology organisation and what is the plan?
Santander puts its engineering base at 24,000 tech talent, including software developers and engineers, in its July 2025 Gravity explainer; the Spain release of June 2025 counts nearly 30,000 software developers and engineers.[1][2]
On scale, the Spain release says that with Spain done and rollouts in Brazil and Mexico to come, the group would have migrated around 80% of its core technology infrastructure to the cloud, and that once the program is complete Gravity will handle more than one trillion technical operations a year.[2]
The 2026 investor day made common technology platforms a pillar of ONE Transformation: Santander expects a better efficiency ratio from scaling them across its five global businesses, and more than €1 billion of business value a year from data and AI initiatives by 2028.[8]
What is not on the record: Santander names Google Cloud for Santander CIB and says Gravity deploys on both private and public clouds, but it has not published which cloud each country bank runs on, a group technology budget, or completion of the Brazil rollout in the sources read for this page.[4][2]
What does the Santander profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Banco Santander AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Nov 1, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 28 dated moves, 20 use cases and 39 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI tools for all employees (multi-provider) | Microsoft Copilot for everyday productivity plus OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini for specialised needs; access extended from nearly 40,000 to all 185,000 employees on 22 June 2026, with about 35,000 staff trained for over 125,000 hours between 2025 and April 2026. | In production | [5][9] |
| AI in software development | 17,000 people used agentic AI in software development in May 2026 and 40% of all code in June 2026 was developed by AI; the 2025 annual report cites over 6,000 developers using coding agents. | In production | [5][10] |
| SAMi AI assistant for Wealth commercial activity | SAMi supports commercial activity in Wealth Management & Insurance alongside SAM Conecta, a global distribution and business-intelligence platform; the Spanish private bank is also building AI-enabled tools to raise banker productivity. | In production | [11] |
| A2K protocol for governed agent access to knowledge | An open specification from Santander AI Lab for agents to resolve which knowledge bases they may use and to consume them with citations, access decisions and audit data, with Python reference packages; Santander has not said whether it runs in production. | Announced | [12] |
| Model Arena and specialised banking models (Santander AI Lab with NVIDIA) | Model Arena evaluates open-weight models against banking tasks to pick the right model for each workload and is being developed to design, simulate, evaluate and supervise banking agents; smaller specialised models cut serving costs from around €5 to about €0.03 per interaction in selected experiments, and one experimental customer-service model cut costs by more than 50% with better conversation quality. | Pilot | [6] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 28, 2026 | Q3 2026 results: EUR 194 million of AI business value | The nine-month results release says Santander continued to deploy AI across its businesses at scale, which generated EUR 194 million of business value (higher revenue, lower costs and lower loan-loss provisions) 'during the year' through better customer service, higher productivity and commercial growth. On the call, CEO Héctor Grisi said 'Our global technology platforms are scaling across the group, and AI is now making a measurable contribution.' | [13][7] |
| Oct 22, 2026 | AI-powered process automation scaled with Maisa | Santander says it is moving its AI automation model from specific tasks to more complex operational capabilities that can be rolled out globally under ONE Transformation, with Spain-based start-up Maisa; the technology logs each run so processes can be traced, audited and reproduced, and Santander already has hundreds of use cases in production with Maisa support across Europe and the Americas. The story repeats the aim of generating over 1 billion euros in business value from AI by 2028. | [14] |
| Oct 19, 2026 | NVIDIA: Model Arena, specialised models and a three-year collaboration framework | Santander AI Lab built Model Arena to evaluate open-weight models against banking tasks, specialises models with NVIDIA NeMo Customizer, uses NVIDIA Kumo models for structured data and runs inference in its own architecture with NVIDIA Dynamo-Triton; in selected experimental use cases serving costs fell from around €5 to approximately €0.03 per interaction. A new three-year framework with NVIDIA covers foundation models, AI agents, fraud and AML, real-time decisioning and simulation including a banking digital twin. | [6] |
| Sep 23, 2026 | Santander AI Lab releases the A2K protocol suite | A2K (Agent-to-Knowledge) is an open specification with Python reference packages, layered on MCP and A2A, for agents to discover, query, cite and audit knowledge bases with authorisation-scoped discovery and five conformance levels. | [12] |
| Jun 25, 2026 | Santander AI Lab opens AI projects on GitHub | Open-source tools under Apache 2.0 for AI governance, fraud and other topics, built without real customer data; Head of Santander AI Lab José Manuel de la Chica says the hard problems of advanced AI are too cross-cutting to tackle in silos. | [15] |
| Jun 9, 2026 | Getnet infrastructure for AI agent-initiated payments | Getnet, Santander's merchant payments platform, launches infrastructure for merchants to accept payments initiated by AI agents, and with Mastercard and Neivor completes the first real-world case in Mexico and Latin America using Mastercard Agent Pay. | [16] |
| Oct 8, 2025 | Global Data & AI function created | A cross-group function with three pillars: transform customer experience and operations through AI, make smarter decisions with reliable data, and accelerate business impact through analytical models; partners named are OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon, with global AI hubs planned. | [17] |
| Aug 12, 2025 | OpenAI collaboration and 'AI-native' ambition | ChatGPT Enterprise rolled out to nearly 15,000 employees in two months, with 30,000 expected by year-end (about 15% of the workforce); the group says AI initiatives generated over EUR 200m of savings in 2024 and that AI copilots support more than 40% of contact-centre interactions; mandatory AI training announced for 2026. | [18][19] |
What is Santander Gravity?
Gravity is Santander's in-house core banking platform for the cloud and the software it uses to migrate the core from the mainframe. It runs workloads on the mainframe and in the cloud in parallel so teams can test in real time before switching, and Santander says it deploys on both private and public clouds.
How much of Santander runs in the cloud?
More than 90% of its IT, Santander said in July 2025. Spain finished moving all of its core technology infrastructure to Gravity on 19 June 2025 and Santander México followed on 18 November 2025. Santander CIB has run on Gravity in Google Cloud since December 2023.
Which cloud provider does Santander use?
Google Cloud is the provider Santander names: Santander CIB migrated to Google Cloud using Gravity in December 2023, and Google Cloud sells a mainframe migration service, Dual Run, based on Gravity. Santander says Gravity runs on private and public clouds and does not name a provider for each country bank.
Which AI models does Santander use?
A mix. Its June 2026 release describes Microsoft Copilot for everyday productivity and a multi-provider approach that includes OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. In October 2026 it said its AI Lab evaluates open-weight models in a Model Arena and serves specialised models with NVIDIA tooling.
How many engineers does Santander have?
Santander's own figures differ by document: its July 2025 Gravity explainer cites 24,000 tech talent, including software developers and engineers, while the June 2025 Spain release counts nearly 30,000 software developers and engineers. In May 2026 over 17,000 people were using agentic AI in software development.
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- Santander turns its AI-first strategy into measurable impact and extends AI access to all 185,000 employees
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- Santander (SAN) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
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- A2K: a new protocol suite for connecting AI agents to governed, auditable enterprise knowledge
- Santander added 17 million customers year-on-year, leading to an increase in underlying profit of 16% to €11.2 billion in the first nine months of 2026
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- Santander publishes AI projects under an Open Source licence to ramp up shared innovation
- Getnet develops infrastructure that enables businesses to accept AI agent-initiated payments
- Driving our transformation with the creation of the Global Data & AI function
- Santander's data & AI-first strategy accelerates through OpenAI collaboration
- Santander partners OpenAI to become 'AI-native' bank
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