What is Nubank's AI strategy?
Nubank's AI strategy is to build its own models on its own transaction data and put them at the center of credit, service and product decisions. CEO David Vélez said on November 13, 2025 that Nu's vision is to become AI-first, integrating foundation models deeply into its operations. The core is nuFormer, a proprietary transformer model that launched for Brazilian credit-card underwriting in late 2025; by Q2 2026 it was in production for credit cards in Brazil and Mexico and unsecured loans in Brazil, and Nu says it delivered a 70% reduction in risk for an equivalent population compared with previous model generations. Nubank bought Hyperplane, a foundation-model start-up, in June 2024, and its co-founder Rohan Ramanath runs AI Core; CTO Eric Young joined in August 2025. AI agents handled more than 60% of Brazilian support conversations in Q2 2026, and Nu is building an 'AI Private Banker' whose features reach over 15 million monthly active users. Outside models appear mainly as a customer perk: Nubank customers have been offered free ChatGPT Go since October 2025, and Vélez joined OpenAI's boards in July 2026. Nu's FY2025 20-F names 'AI as a superpower' as its third priority and lists AI among its risk factors. The 20-F does not break out AI spending or AI headcount.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Data as of Oct 22, 2026 · Nubank profile updated Oct 16, 2026 · 22 sources cited on this page · 52 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
What have Nubank's executives said about AI, and when?
One row per statement or move, in date order. Quotes are as published by Nu or the outlet named in the source.
| Statement or move | Who | When |
|---|---|---|
| AI has been part of Nu's DNA since its founding and customer service is its most relevant use; "In no way do we want someone to be stuck talking to an AI" | Vitor Olivier, then CTO, on the first Nu Videocast | March 12, 2024[11] |
| Buys Hyperplane, a Silicon Valley start-up whose platform trains self-supervised models on banks' first-party data; Hyperplane is to "power the core machine learning capabilities, building foundational models" | Nubank; CEO David Vélez quoted | June 26, 2024 (completed July 31, 2024, per the 20-F)[5][10] |
| About 30% of code done with AI and 50% of customer-service needs covered by AI tools, with no layoffs | David Vélez, in a Bloomberg interview | May 22, 2025[12] |
| "This same technology that is predicting the next word in a series of word snippets is the same technology that you can use to understand financial transaction history" | Eric Young, new CTO, on the Nu Videocast | September 10, 2025[13] |
| "Our vision is to become AI-first, which means integrating foundation models deeply into our operations to drive an AI-native interface to banking" | David Vélez, Q3 2025 results | November 13, 2025[1] |
| Hires the dex Labs team, mainly data engineers, to work on AI-related initiatives from December 2 | Nubank | November 27, 2025[14] |
| "Third, AI as a superpower": nuFormer to be expanded to lending in Brazil and credit cards in Mexico, toward "an AI-powered personal banker in every customer's pocket" | Nu Holdings, FY2025 Form 20-F | April 8, 2026[10] |
| nuFormer delivered a 70% reduction in risk for an equivalent population compared to previous generations; gains used to identify customers more accurately, not to lower underwriting standards | Nu Videocast with CFO Guilherme Lago, Jeremy Selesner and Tyler Horn | May 7, 2026[4] |
| "We would rather define the standard than wait and react"; the research lab cut its experiment cycle from months to a single day | Eric Young and Rohan Ramanath, Nu Videocast | June 11, 2026[6] |
| Joins the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC; on the Q2 call he said getting closer to OpenAI "provides a very interesting insight" | David Vélez | July 21, 2026[9][15] |
| Ranked first of the region's 20 largest financial institutions in Evident's 2026 AI Index for Banks, Latin America | Evident, announced by Nu | July 21, 2026[16] |
| "Internally and externally, we think artificial intelligence is the most important technology transformation in our history" | David Vélez, Q2 2026 call | August 13, 2026[15] |
Which AI products has Nubank shipped, in what order, and on what?
| Product | What it does | Built on | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Precog | Uses data to identify why a customer is contacting customer service, so the person answering is already prepared with information to solve the issue | Nu's own data and AI | Described March 2024[11] |
| Pix by voice, text or image | Sends Pix transfers from audio, text or image messages in the app or on WhatsApp; tested by 2 million WhatsApp users; in-app use up to 60% faster | Generative AI (provider not named) | December 10, 2024[17] |
| Predictive foundation models | Billion-parameter transformer models trained on all 100+ million customers and their transactions, deployed in several key decision engines in the first eight months | Nu's AI Platform, with Ray to scale heterogeneous clusters | Described June 11, 2025[18] |
| ChatGPT Go for customers | Free ChatGPT Go for one month (all customers), three months (Nubank+) or one year (Ultravioleta); OpenAI's first partnership with a financial institution in Brazil | OpenAI GPT-5 | October 28, 2025[8][19] |
| nuFormer underwriting | Credit-card underwriting in Brazil (late 2025); by Q2 2026 also credit cards in Mexico and unsecured lending in Brazil, with SME and Colombian cards in testing; latest generation quadrupled context length, training and inference speed | Proprietary transformer architecture with self-supervised learning | Late 2025[2][3][10] |
| AI customer-support agents | Handle more than 60% of customer-support conversations in Brazil at or above human parity | Not disclosed | Q2 2026 figure[3][20] |
| AI Private Banker features | Help customers organise finances, manage debt and make credit decisions; individual features in testing used by over 15 million monthly active users | nuFormer and Nu's AI capabilities | June 2026 figure[6] |
| Machine learning estate | Proprietary data fed into AI and 60+ machine learning algorithms for underwriting, support, personalization and risk; Amazon Web Services is the primary third-party cloud provider | In-house models on AWS | FY2025 20-F[10] |
Where does AI sit in Nubank's organization, what does the 20-F say, and what is not disclosed?
AI is run from the technology organization. Eric Young became CTO in August 2025 after senior engineering roles at Snap and Google, and Rohan Ramanath, a Hyperplane co-founder, is General Manager of AI Core, the unit the 20-F names alongside the Hyperplane acquisition. Chief Product Officer Carl Rivera, who joined in May 2026, said Nu is one of the companies furthest ahead in internal AI adoption.[7][6][10][21]
Credit is where the strategy is measured. Nu says it has built 17 generations of limit-increase models, 10 generations of acquisition models and more than 100 terabytes of behavioral data, and that nuFormer's gains translated into a 50-basis-point rise in its Brazilian credit-card purchase volume share in Q4 2025, with write-offs stable at 2.8% to 2.9% of the book.[4]
The FY2025 20-F says Nu uses AI in customer service, credit analysis and data analytics, and established machine learning in fraud detection, anti-money laundering, sanctions screening, personalization and marketing. It warns that generative AI, used in customer service and code analysis, may produce outputs that are inaccurate, incomplete or biased, cites the EU AI Act, and says new AI rules could affect its models, including under fair lending laws.[10]
What is not disclosed: AI spending, AI headcount, the model providers behind the support agents and the Pix generative AI feature, nuFormer's size in production, and loss results by model generation beyond the figures above. OpenAI's role on the record is a consumer subscription offer and Vélez's board seats, not a part in underwriting.[10][3][17][8]
What does the Nubank profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Nubank AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 16, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 15 dated moves, 7 use cases and 21 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| nuFormer underwriting | Foundation-model underwriting in production for credit cards in Brazil and Mexico and unsecured lending in Brazil; SME lending and Colombian cards in testing (Q2 2026). | In production | [3][2] |
| AI customer-support agents | AI agents handle more than 60% of customer-support conversations in Brazil at or above human parity, per Nu's Q2 2026 release; Nu engineers describe the goal as agents capable of handling debt renegotiation, card logistics and fraud prevention. | In production | [3][20] |
| AI Private Banker | A set of AI capabilities to help customers organise finances, manage debt and make credit decisions; individual features in testing are used by over 15 million monthly active users, with a packaged version expected. | Pilot | [6] |
| AI-assisted development | About 30% of code was done with AI as of May 2025; Nu cites a backend architecture project accelerated by nearly a year through AI-assisted development. | In production | [12][6] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 13, 2026 | Q2 2026: nuFormer in three portfolios, AI agents above 60% of support | Net income passed $1 billion ($1.1 billion) for the first time with 139 million customers; the latest nuFormer generation quadrupled context length, training and inference speed, and AI agents handled more than 60% of Brazilian support conversations. | [3] |
| Jul 21, 2026 | Vélez joins OpenAI's boards | OpenAI appointed Vélez and BNY CEO Robin Vince to the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC. On Nu's Q2 call Vélez said 'getting closer to a company like OpenAI provides a very interesting insight'. | [9][15] |
| Jun 11, 2026 | Nu sets out its AI strategy and the 'AI Private Banker' | CTO Eric Young and AI Core head Rohan Ramanath said nuFormer is live in Nu's largest Brazilian credit segment, that its research lab cut experiment cycles from months to a day, and that AI Private Banker features in testing are used by over 15 million monthly active users. | [6] |
| Feb 25, 2026 | Q4 2025: nuFormer credited with market-share gain | Reporting full-year 2025 revenue of $16.3 billion and net income of $2.9 billion, Nu said nuFormer, launched in late 2025 for credit underwriting in Brazil, drove its largest quarterly gain in credit-card market share in 10 quarters, with expansion planned to Brazilian lending and Mexican cards. | [2] |
| Feb 23, 2026 | Nubank and OpenAI partner on ChatGPT Go for customers | All Nubank customers get one month of ChatGPT Go free, Nubank+ customers three months and Ultravioleta customers one year, promoted in a national advertising campaign. | [19] |
| Nov 13, 2025 | Q3 2025: Nu states an 'AI-first' vision | With 127 million customers and $783 million of net income in the quarter, Vélez said Nu's vision is to become AI-first, integrating foundation models deeply into operations to drive an AI-native interface to banking. | [1] |
| May 22, 2025 | CEO: 30% of code written with AI, 50% of service needs covered | In a Bloomberg interview published by American Banker, Vélez said Nu had halved its management layers, that about 30% of code was done with AI and 50% of customer-service needs were covered by AI tools, and that there had been no layoffs. | [12] |
| Jun 26, 2024 | Nubank acquires AI start-up Hyperplane | Hyperplane, a San Francisco data-intelligence start-up founded in 2022 that builds foundation models for banks' first-party data, announced its acquisition by Nubank; the price was not disclosed. Vélez said the deal would help customers 'receive truly customized financial advice'. | [22] |
Who leads AI at Nubank?
Founder and CEO David Vélez sets the AI-first direction he announced in November 2025. CTO Eric Young, who joined in August 2025 from Snap and earlier Google, runs technology, and Rohan Ramanath, a co-founder of Hyperplane, which Nubank bought in 2024, is General Manager of AI Core, the unit that builds nuFormer.
What does Nubank's 20-F say about AI?
The FY2025 20-F, filed April 8, 2026, lists 'AI as a superpower' as Nu's third priority, with nuFormer to expand to Brazilian lending and Mexican cards. It names AI as a risk factor, warning that generative AI may give inaccurate or biased outputs and that evolving AI and fair lending rules could affect its models.
How did Hyperplane shape Nubank's AI strategy?
Nubank announced the purchase of Hyperplane, a start-up that trains self-supervised foundation models on banks' first-party data, on June 26, 2024 and completed it on July 31, 2024. Nubank said Hyperplane would power its core machine learning capabilities, and co-founder Rohan Ramanath now runs AI Core.
Does Nubank build its own AI models or buy them?
Its core models are its own. nuFormer is a proprietary transformer trained on Nu's transaction data, and engineers describe billion-parameter models trained across 100+ million customers. OpenAI appears as a customer benefit, free ChatGPT Go since October 2025, and through Vélez's board seats, not as the underwriting engine.
What results has nuFormer produced?
Nu says nuFormer delivered a 70% reduction in risk for an equivalent population compared with earlier models and translated into a 50-basis-point rise in its Brazilian credit-card purchase volume share in Q4 2025, which it calls the largest absolute gain by any player in the last decade, per management data, while write-offs stayed at 2.8% to 2.9%.
- Nu Holdings Ltd. Reports Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results
- Nubank reports 45% revenue increase in latest earnings
- Nu Holdings Ltd. Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results
- Nubank's AI-powered credit model extends access while maintaining portfolio quality
- Nubank acquires Hyperplane to accelerate AI-first strategy
- Nubank details AI transformation strategy built on data, foundation models, and democratized financial advice
- Nubank appoints Eric Young as Chief Technology Officer
- OpenAI launches ChatGPT Go in Brazil and partners with Nubank for exclusive benefits
- OpenAI appoints two new members to board of directors
- Nu Holdings Ltd. Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025
- Nubank CTO Talks About AI Applications on Nu Videocast
- Nu cuts management layers and plans C-suite hiring, CEO says
- CTO Eric Young discusses the role of AI in Nubank's expansion and the future of financial services
- Nubank Strengthens Data and AI Strategy with dex Labs Team hiring
- Nubank's quarterly income hits $1 billion for the first time
- Nubank Ranked #1 in the 2026 Evident AI Index for Banks in Latin America
- Customers can transfer money by giving commands using audio, text, and image messages
- Building Foundation Models into Nubank's AI Platform
- Nubank highlights the benefits of ChatGPT Go in a new campaign
- Building AI agents for 131 million customers
- New CPO Carl Rivera outlines how AI-personalized experiences will enable Nubank's new phases of expansion
- Nubank acquires AI-for-banks startup Hyperplane
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