Build, don't bolt on: an in-house research division trains a transaction foundation model that is meant to feed the assistant, fraud and credit systems from one shared engine.
How is Revolut using AI?
Revolut's flagship AI product is AIR (AI by Revolut), an in-app assistant launched to UK customers in April 2026, for managing spending, investments, cards and trips by conversation. Behind it, Revolut Research builds PRAGMA, a transaction foundation model made with NVIDIA and pre-trained on about 26 million users' records. Its FY2025 annual report says Assistant, its LLM support chatbot, resolves over 75% of customer queries. Revolut reports 80 million-plus retail customers.
Category
Neobank
Founded
2015
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Licence and supervision
UK bank (PRA/FCA): licensed with restrictions July 2024, full launch March 2026; EU bank via Lithuania (Bank of Lithuania; direct ECB supervision as a significant institution since January 2024); US national bank charter: OCC conditional approval September 2026, FDIC and Federal Reserve approvals pending.
Scale
Over 80 million retail customers worldwide, as of 25 August 2026
Flagship platform
AIR (AI by Revolut)
AI leadership
Nik Storonsky · Pavel Nesterov · Anton Repushko · Julia Ponomareva · David Eborne
- AIR, Revolut's in-app AI financial assistant, launched in the UK on 9 April 2026; Revolut says it applies a zero data-retention policy with third-party AI partners.
- Revolut Research, a dedicated AI Research division, was announced on 25 August 2026 as the home of PRAGMA, a proprietary transaction foundation model built with NVIDIA; early deployments on historical data showed 2.3x higher credit-default accuracy, 65% more fraud cases caught and 41% more relevant product recommendations versus legacy systems.
- Assistant, Revolut's LLM-powered customer-support chatbot, resolves over 75% of all customer queries after Revolut expanded its 'actioning' capabilities, per the FY2025 annual report.
- An AI scam-detection feature for card payments, launched 15 February 2024 and built by Revolut's in-house financial crime team, produced a 30% reduction in fraud losses from card scams tied to investment payments since testing began.
- NVIDIA is both an investor and a technical partner: NVentures took part in the November 2025 share sale that valued Revolut at $75 billion, and NVIDIA's case study says PRAGMA was pre-trained on H100 GPUs on Nebius AI Cloud.
- FY2025 (year to 31 December 2025): revenue £4.5 billion (+46% year on year), profit before tax £1.7 billion (+57%), net profit £1.3 billion, 68.3 million retail customers (up from 52.5 million), 767,000 business customers.
- Regulatory footprint expanded alongside the AI build-out: UK bank exited mobilisation and launched 11 March 2026; the EU bank in Lithuania has been under direct ECB supervision as a 'significant' institution since 1 January 2024; the US charter received OCC conditional approval on 3 September 2026.
What is AIR (AI by Revolut)?
AIR is Revolut's in-app AI assistant, launched to UK customers on 9 April 2026. It lets customers navigate spending insights, investments, subscriptions and card controls, plus travel tasks such as trip budgeting and eSIM purchases, through conversation rather than app menus. Revolut says it applies a zero data-retention policy with third-party AI partners, so personal data is not stored externally or used to train external models. It runs on the connected engines built by Revolut Research, including the PRAGMA foundation model.[1][2][15]
What has Revolut done on AI, and when?
- Sep 3, 2026
OCC grants conditional approval for a US national bank charter[9]
The OCC gives conditional approval to Revolut's national bank charter application; FDIC deposit insurance and Federal Reserve approval are still required before the proposed Revolut Bank US can open, with a 2027 launch targeted.
- Aug 25, 2026
Revolut Research launches with PRAGMA[2][14]
Revolut announces a dedicated AI Research division inside its AI Department. Its foundation model, PRAGMA, is built with NVIDIA; NVIDIA's case study says it was pre-trained on about 26 million user records across 111 countries (roughly 24–40 billion events). Head of Revolut Research Anton Repushko and Head of AI Pavel Nesterov are named.
- May 27, 2026
AI financial-crime detection outperforms manual review, US CEO says[17]
Revolut US CEO Cetin Duransoy says the bank's AI systems perform statistically significantly better than human reviewers at flagging suspicious transactions.
- Apr 21, 2026
Coverage of the build-vs-buy AI strategy[16]
Trade press reports Revolut trained its own foundation model rather than licensing from OpenAI or Anthropic, citing 40 billion transactions and other events from 25 million users across 111 countries as training data, running on 200+ NVIDIA H100 GPUs.
- Apr 9, 2026
AIR launches in the UK[1]
Revolut launches AIR (AI by Revolut), an in-app AI assistant for spending insight, investing, card controls and travel tasks, to UK customers; Julia Ponomareva, Partner and GM of CX and AI Products, calls it 'a co-pilot that elevates everyday life.'
- Mar 12, 2026
FY2025 annual report published[6]
Revenue reaches £4.5 billion (+46%), profit before tax £1.7 billion (+57%); the report discloses that Revolut's Gen AI-powered support chatbot, Assistant, resolved over 75% of customer support interactions by year end, and that AI-driven financial-crime review capacity rose roughly tenfold.
- Mar 11, 2026
- Mar 5, 2026
- Nov 24, 2025
- Jul 25, 2024
UK banking licence with restrictions[4]
The PRA grants Revolut NewCo Ltd a UK banking licence with restrictions, starting the 'mobilisation' stage in which deposits are capped and nothing changes for existing customers.
- Feb 15, 2024
AI card-scam detection feature launches[3]
Built in-house by Revolut's financial crime team, the feature uses machine learning to detect a likely scam mid-payment, decline it and route the customer through a scam-intervention flow; Revolut reports a 30% reduction in card-scam fraud losses since testing began.
- Jan 1, 2024
ECB takes over direct supervision of the Lithuania bank[10]
Following a request from Lietuvos bankas, the ECB classifies Revolut Holdings Europe UAB and Revolut Bank UAB as 'significant' institutions, assuming direct supervision from 1 January 2024, citing wide cross-border presence and rapid balance-sheet growth.
Where does Revolut use AI today?
| System | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIR (AI by Revolut)[1][15] | In-app AI assistant for spending insights, investment tracking, subscription and card management, and travel tasks, rolling out to UK customers since April 2026. | Rolling out | Customer-facing chatbots |
| Assistant[6] | LLM-powered customer-support chatbot inside the app that resolves account queries and escalates complex cases to human specialists; resolved over 75% of all customer queries by the end of 2025. | In production | Customer-facing chatbots |
| AI card-scam detection[3] | In-house machine-learning feature that detects likely authorised push-payment/card scams mid-transaction, declines the payment and routes the customer through an intervention flow; a 30% reduction in card-scam fraud losses reported since testing. | In production | Fraud detection |
| PRAGMA foundation model[2][14][16] | Proprietary transaction foundation model built with NVIDIA, pre-trained on about 26 million user records across 111 countries (roughly 24–40 billion events, per NVIDIA), for real-time risk assessment, platform operations and product recommendations. | Rolling out | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI-assisted financial-crime review[6][17] | Advanced AI models let Revolut's financial-crime team increase the number of cases reviewed daily by almost 10x, per the FY2025 annual report; the US CEO says the AI outperforms manual review on flagging suspicious transactions. | In production | AML / KYC |
| AI agents in security operations[6] | AI agents deployed across real-time monitoring and account-protection processes, automating a share of routine review and increasing coverage of complex cases, per the FY2025 annual report. | In production | Cybersecurity |
| AI Regulatory Compliance Programme[6] | Internal programme established to address EU AI Act requirements and provide a governance foundation for Revolut's AI initiatives, disclosed in the FY2025 annual report. | In production | AI governance (general) |
Use-case links open the tracker's rules-by-use-case matrix: which documents govern each system type.
What has Revolut disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Retail customers worldwide | 80 million+[2] | Aug 25, 2026 |
| FY2025 revenue | £4.5 billion (+46% YoY)[6] | Mar 12, 2026 |
| FY2025 profit before tax | £1.7 billion (+57% YoY)[6] | Mar 12, 2026 |
| Valuation | $75 billion[7] | Nov 24, 2025 |
| Customer support queries resolved by Assistant (Gen AI chatbot) | Over 75%[6] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Reduction in card-scam fraud losses since AI scam detection launch | 30%[3] | Feb 15, 2024 |
| PRAGMA early performance gains vs. legacy systems | 2.3x credit-risk accuracy; 65% more fraud caught; 41% better recommendations[2] | Aug 25, 2026 |
“It's not just an assistant; it's a co-pilot that elevates everyday life, making financial management as easy and natural as sending a text.”[1]
Julia Ponomareva · Partner and General Manager of CX and AI Products, Revolut · Apr 9, 2026
“To lead the future of intelligent banking, you cannot rely on third-party blueprints. We have launched Revolut Research to institutionalise our 'build, don't bolt on' philosophy.”[2]
Pavel Nesterov · Head of AI, Revolut · Aug 25, 2026
“Revolut Research has been established to responsibly build financial intelligence at its deepest layer, rather than patching together narrow, specialised models.”[2]
Anton Repushko · Head of Revolut Research · Aug 25, 2026
“Launching our UK bank has been a long-term strategic priority for Revolut, and marks a significant moment in our journey.”[5]
Nik Storonsky · Co-Founder and CEO, Revolut · Mar 11, 2026
Who runs AI at Revolut?
Which regulators govern Revolut's AI?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| UK (BoE / PRA / FCA) | UK bank since 11 March 2026 (previously licensed with restrictions from July 2024); FCA AI guidance and the PRA's model-risk expectations apply directly to AIR, Assistant and the AI scam-detection and credit models. | FCA AI Update (Apr 2024) FCA FS25/5 2024 BoE/FCA AI survey PRA SS1/23 |
| ECB | Revolut Holdings Europe UAB and Revolut Bank UAB (Lithuania) have been classified 'significant' and under the ECB's direct supervision since 1 January 2024, covering model risk in AI-driven credit and fraud systems used across the EU bank. | SSM supervisory priorities 2026–28 |
| EU AI Act | Revolut's FY2025 annual report discloses an internal AI Regulatory Compliance Programme built specifically to meet EU AI Act obligations for its AI systems used in EU markets. | Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 EBA factsheet on the AI Act GDPR Article 22 |
| Bank of Lithuania | Original licensing authority for Revolut's EU bank (Revolut Bank UAB), which remains jointly supervised with the ECB. | |
| OCC | Revolut Bank US, N.A. received OCC conditional approval for a national bank charter on 3 September 2026, still pending FDIC and Federal Reserve sign-off before a planned 2027 launch; OCC model-risk expectations will apply to its US AI-driven credit and fraud systems. |
Linked authorities have a page in the AI Regulation Tracker; the others are named for completeness and not yet tracked.
What does the public record suggest about Revolut's AI strategy?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice.
01
One foundation model is replacing several point systems
PRAGMA is described as consolidating fraud, credit-risk and recommendation models that previously ran separately. A single shared model behind consumer-facing (AIR) and back-office (fraud, credit) decisions concentrates both the upside and the model-risk exposure in one place.
02
The older AI lines predate the shared engine
The scam-detection feature (2024) and the support chatbot Assistant predate PRAGMA and Revolut Research (2026). Revolut now presents its AI as 'connected engines' from one research division; the public record does not yet say how far the older systems have moved onto PRAGMA.
03
NVIDIA is investor, infrastructure vendor and case-study partner at once
NVentures holds equity from the $75 billion round, Revolut trains PRAGMA on NVIDIA GPUs, and NVIDIA publishes the technical case study — a bundled relationship worth watching for concentration and independence questions as Revolut scales AI-driven credit decisions.
04
Licence expansion and AI expansion are running on the same clock
The UK bank exit from mobilisation, the EU bank's ECB 'significant' status, and the US OCC conditional charter all land in the same 2024–2026 window as AIR, Assistant and PRAGMA — regulators in each jurisdiction will be assessing AI-driven decisioning just as the underlying banking licence itself is new or newly unrestricted.
05
Build-not-buy claims invite scrutiny of the boundary
Revolut frames PRAGMA as proprietary and trained in-house, while AIR explicitly runs through unnamed 'third-party AI partners' under a stated zero-retention policy — the two claims sit together but describe different parts of the stack, and Revolut has not named which functions rely on external model providers.
Does Revolut have an AI assistant?
Yes. AIR (AI by Revolut) is an in-app AI assistant that launched to UK customers on 9 April 2026. It lets customers check spending, manage investments and subscriptions, freeze cards and handle some travel tasks through conversation, and Revolut says it applies a zero data-retention policy with its third-party AI partners.
How does Revolut use AI to stop scams?
Revolut launched an in-house, machine-learning-based scam-detection feature on 15 February 2024 that can identify a likely card scam mid-payment, decline the transaction and route the customer through an in-app intervention flow with a fraud specialist. Revolut reported a 30% reduction in card-scam fraud losses since the feature began testing. Its FY2025 annual report also describes AI models that increased the volume of financial-crime cases reviewed daily by close to tenfold.
Is Revolut a bank in the UK?
Yes, since 11 March 2026. Revolut Bank UK Ltd received a UK banking licence with restrictions from the PRA on 25 July 2024 and entered the 'mobilisation' phase; the PRA lifted those restrictions and approved the bank's full launch on 11 March 2026, making deposits eligible for FSCS protection.
Who regulates Revolut?
Revolut's UK bank is regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority. Its EU bank, based in Lithuania (Revolut Bank UAB / Revolut Holdings Europe UAB), has been under the European Central Bank's direct supervision as a 'significant' institution since 1 January 2024, alongside the Bank of Lithuania. In the US, Revolut's proposed national bank has conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, granted 3 September 2026, and still needs FDIC and Federal Reserve sign-off.
How many customers does Revolut have?
Revolut said it had over 80 million retail customers worldwide as of 25 August 2026. Its FY2025 annual report recorded 68.3 million retail customers and 767,000 business customers as of 31 December 2025, up from 52.5 million and 578,000 respectively a year earlier.
What is PRAGMA, Revolut's AI model?
PRAGMA is Revolut's proprietary transaction foundation model, built with NVIDIA and disclosed publicly on 25 August 2026 alongside the launch of Revolut Research, its dedicated AI Research division. It is trained on tens of billions of transactions and other events across Revolut's markets and is used for real-time risk assessment, platform operations and product recommendations, including the systems behind the AIR assistant.
Is Revolut's AI built in-house or licensed from other AI companies?
Revolut says PRAGMA and its core risk and recommendation models are trained in-house on its own data rather than licensed from providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic. AIR, its customer-facing assistant, does draw on unnamed third-party AI partners for parts of its functionality, but Revolut says it applies a zero data-retention policy so customer data is not stored externally or used to train those partners' models.
- Revolut enters new era of money intelligence with launch of AI assistant
- Revolut Announces Launch of Dedicated AI Research Division: Revolut Research
- Revolut launches AI feature to protect customers from card scams and break the scammers 'spell'
- Revolut receives UK banking licence
- Revolut Launches UK Bank
- Revolut Group Holdings Ltd, Annual Report 2025
- Revolut Completes Fundraising Process Establishing $75 Billion Valuation
- Revolut Files U.S. Bank Charter Application, Names New U.S. CEO
- Revolut Receives Conditional Approval from U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to Form a National Bank
- Significance Assessment: 2023 at a glance – moving to 2024
- Revolut acquires full UK banking license after years-long wait
- Revolut valued at $75B
- Fintech giant Revolut pursues US bank charter
- Revolut's Transaction Foundation Model is 3-5x Faster on NVIDIA H100 GPUs
- Revolut Rolls Out AI Assistant for Daily Financial Tasks
- Revolut Skips OpenAI, Trains AI on 25 Million Customers
- Revolut's AI Outperforms Human Reviewers at Detecting Financial Crime
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