Nubank details AI transformation strategy built on data, foundation models, and democratized financial advice

São Paulo, June 11, 2026 – Nu, the leading digital bank in Latin America, outlined its artificial intelligence strategy on the Nu Videocast. Chief Technology Officer Eric Young and General Manager of AI Core Rohan Ramanath detailed how the company’s proprietary data, foundation models, and talent position it to transform banking through AI across credit, customer experience, and internal operations.

nuFormer: precision that drives inclusion and growth

At the center of the strategy is nuFormer, Nu’s proprietary self-supervised foundation model.  nuFormer’s precision allows Nu to safely extend credit to customers who would have been excluded by less granular models, driving financial inclusion and revenue growth simultaneously. 

The model is live in Nu’s largest credit segment in Brazil and expanding to personal loans, Mexico, and Colombia. It’s not only enabling faster, more accurate decisions, but it’s feeding part of its own improvements: the research team has been able to compress its experimentation cycle from months to a single day by automating a lab that tests new techniques from academic papers against internal data.

“Better models don’t just reduce losses. They allow us to safely and responsibly extend credit to a larger number of people. That is inclusion and profitability in one move,” said Rohan Ramanath, General Manager of AI Core at Nu.

Three structural advantages: data, talent, and culture

Nu’s AI strategy is built on three advantages the company has developed over more than a decade. 

• The first is data: a base of 135 million customers, at an 83% activity rate and high principality gives the company a complete view of aggregated financial behavior. 
• The second is talent: Nu attracts top global talent, as evidenced by awards such as LinkedIn’s 2026 Top Companies in Brazil, Best Place to Work – Glassdoor’s Employer Branding Awards 2025, and Forbes’ World’s Best Employers 2025. Additionally, the 2024 acquisition of Hyperplane brought frontier AI researchers from Google, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft, and that expertise is mirrored across the organization. 
• The third is culture: every employee has access to AI prototyping tools, and the company measures use and impact across functions. One example of the impact of AI in internal processes is a backend architecture project accelerated by nearly a year through AI-assisted development.

“It’s not enough to have one of these, not enough to have two. It’s extremely hard to build all three, and even harder to sustain them,” Ramanath said about Nu’s differentiators.

AI Private Banker: financial advice for every income level

Nu is developing what it internally calls the AI Private Banker: a set of AI capabilities designed to help customers organize finances, manage debt, and make better credit decisions. The type of intelligence that’s only available to the ultra-wealthy, in the pockets of hundreds of millions.

The initiative also targets an economic gap: the incremental value of a better financial decision is greatest for low- and moderate-income households, a population that has historically had limited access to personalized financial advice.

Individual features have been in testing for 6 to 12 months and are already used by over 15 million monthly active users. A packaged version is expected soon.

Competitive positioning

Nu’s average revenue per active customer was approximately US$16 in Q1’26, compared with roughly US$40 at incumbent banks. AI-driven personalization, cross-sell, and the private banker initiative are investments to close that gap. A recent Morgan Stanley research report described Nu as applying the same playbook from the digital banking era to AI: move early, build with conviction, use technology to reshape cost and experience, and leverage scale to widen the competitive moat.

“We would rather define the standard than wait and react. That challenger mentality — reinventing the status quo, removing complexity — that is exactly what this moment calls for,” said Eric Young, Chief Technology Officer at Nu.