Artificial intelligence will bring about a faster and more profound transformation than the digital revolution, drastically altering customer relations, value propositions and the way organizations operate. This was the message BBVA CEO Onur Genç delivered in his presentation at the fintech conference Money2020, where he stressed that differentiation in this new era will hinge on how capable organizations are of transforming and scaling AI across their operations, an area where BBVA is already taking decisive steps.  In addition, he underscored that the bank has established a very clear roadmap to build a more personalized, accessible and proactive banking experience for its clients.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs investor conference on Wednesday, BBVA’s Global Head of Finance, Luisa Gómez Bravo, noted that AI will be one of the key forces shaping the future of banking and will drive a transformation that is greater, faster, and more disruptive than digitalization, benefiting clients in particular: “We believe AI can become a powerful engine for innovation and value creation for clients and, ultimately, generate significantly greater value for our shareholders.”

The AI Transformation area, which sits at the top level of the organization and will be led by Antonio Bravo combines the current Data area with critical technological capabilities to industrialize the creation, deployment and management of artificial intelligence (AI) agents across the organization. This evolution will accelerate the bank’s transformation and enable smarter, more proactive and highly personalized financial services for its customers.

BBVA and the University of Navarra have completed the first two industrial doctorates in data science under their joint program. This pioneering initiative enables working professionals to carry out advanced academic research into real challenges facing the financial sector. Both theses propose ways of developing AI models that can identify the causes behind financial decisions, not just the correlations.

Photo caption (from left to right): Paul G. Tobin, Global Head of Talent and Culture at BBVA; Paloma Grau, Vice President for Research and Sustainability at the University of Navarra; the newly awarded PhDs Paloma Marín and Jesús Renero; and Jesús López Fidalgo, Director of DATAI. / Source: University of Navarra

BBVA has announced its participation as a founding partner in the OpenAI Deployment Company, the new company launched by OpenAI, together with 18 leading investment firms, consultancies and system integrators. With a total investment of more than $4 billion, the OpenAI Deployment Company will provide services to facilitate the deployment of artificial intelligence across enterprise organizations.

Garanti BBVA’s AI journey, launched in 2016, has evolved into Ugi, which today handles more than 6.4 million monthly interactions on average, has 1.6 million active users, and supports more than 300 end-to-end banking transactions. With the integration of generative AI, Ugi can now understand 90% of user requests. Over the past year, nearly 50% of mobile banking customers interacted with Ugi at least once, while the system delivered proactive solutions through 780,000 instant notifications per month.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already one of the main drivers of transformation in the financial sector and BBVA has been looking closely at how people incorporate it into their work. Training, new internal roles that promote its uptake, and a culture that encourages experimentation are some of the pillars of a strategy aimed at transforming how work is done across the organization.

Harvard Business Review has identified BBVA as an example of how expanding access to generative AI tools can channel internal demand, transforming it into a driver of innovation. All Group employees currently have access to generative AI tools, including those in the commercial network, and over half of them use these tools on a weekly basis.

Germany is rapidly becoming one of the bank’s most important strategic growth markets in Europe. Since the launch of its digital retail bank in June 2025, BBVA has surpassed a six-figure customer base. Notably 90% of these customers have “activated, funded their accounts, and are actively using them,” Murat Kalkan, BBVA’s Global Head of Digital Banks, said today at FIBE in Berlin. That strong early confidence is further underscored by the fact that 23% (as of early 2026) of BBVA’s customers in Germany hold more than €100,000 with the bank. Kalkan emphasized that  BBVA’s ambition is to become a genuine primary banking alternative for German customers.

BBVA has secured 3rd place among the best banks in Italy in the 2026 edition of the 'World’s Best Banks' list published by Forbes. This result marks an improvement over last year, when the bank ranked at the fifth place, and further strengthens its position among the leading financial institutions in the country.

The BBVA Bot Talent competition, through which the bank promotes AI adoption across the organization, received 315 proposals from over 1,200 employees in its second edition. The six finalists presented solutions ranging from risk analysis and customer extortion detection to the translation of financial content into indigenous languages and meeting optimization. The winning project, PresentAltor, automates corporate content creation in seconds, helping to reduce manual tasks and enhance team efficiency.

Garanti BBVA has expanded its export financing solutions by making its Turkish lira (TRY) Export Loan accessible through digital channels. Clients can now draw on their existing limits without visiting a branch and meet their financing needs quickly and easily, with financing terms of up to 24 months.

Garanti BBVA recently launched ‘My Family,’ a new section on its Garanti BBVA Mobile app that lets parents manage their children’s finances on a single screen. This all-in-one solution features expense-tracking, educational content and financial products, such as checking accounts, savings accounts, Türkiye’s Individual Pension System (BES) and cards.

Techstars Startup Weekend Women Istanbul, organized as part of Garanti BBVA's role as Techstars lead partner in Turkey, has come to a close. Held simultaneously with events in 40 cities around the world, the Istanbul leg took place at Salt Galata from March 6 to 8, coinciding with International Women's Day.

BBVA Spark has granted €4 million in financing to TaxDown, a fintech specialized in digital taxation in Spain with a presence in Latin America. The operation will accelerate the company’s growth, the development of new AI-based solutions and the expansion of its technological team. This financing benefits from the support of the European Union – NextGenerationEU and the European Investment Fund, with with Spain supporting the program through the InvestEU State compartment.

BBVA Spark will take part for the fourth consecutive year in 4YFN, the leading event for startups, investors and corporates held within the framework of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The event comes at a key moment for the unit. Since its launch, BBVA Spark has committed close to €1 billion in financing and, in the past year alone, signed more than 30 deals with innovative, high-growth companies across Europe and Latin America.

For years, discussions around artificial intelligence in business have focused on the technology itself: which models to use, which tools to deploy, and which use cases to prioritize. In many organizations, that stage is largely behind us. AI is now part of everyday operations across multiple functions. As a result, the real challenge has shifted.

BBVA has joined a consortium of eleven major European financial institutions that have formed a joint venture, Qivalis, to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin. The aim is to enable faster and cheaper payments, as well as the settlement of digital assets within a regulated environment backed by all the safeguards that a European bank can offer. The commercial launch is slated for the second half of 2026, once the technical and regulatory developments have been completed.

The financing, closed at the end of 2025, aims to support the scaling of Lanes & Planes, the leading provider of digital solutions for mid-market business travel and expense management. The facility will serve to finance the company's growth. This financing partially benefits from the support of the European Union and the European Investment Fund (EIF) under the InvestEU program.

Garanti BBVA was recently honored with two awards at the 2025 Digital Banking Awards, organized by international financial publishing group World Finance, for the ‘Best Digital Bank in Retail Banking’ and the ‘Best Mobile Banking App.’ The awards are a reflection of the bank’s approach to digital banking and its focus on customers.

In 2025, BBVA successfully completed the global rollout of ADA, its new data and artificial intelligence platform. This technological foundation is key in enabling the bank to offer clients more agile, personalized, and efficient services. Over the course of the year, ADA also received recognition from numerous international organizations operating in the financial and technology sectors.

At the 'Beyond Hype: crypto meets banking at BBVA' event, BBVA Spark brought together leaders from the crypto industry such as Andrei Manuel, founder of Bit2Me, Catriona Wingate, head of banking at BVNK in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Kaushik Sthankiya, head of banking at Kraken. The experts analysed the factors driving the growth of crypto companies, the opportunities and challenges they face when coexisting with traditional financial infrastructures, and how collaboration with banks can make a difference.

BBVA has rolled out a roadmap, known as ‘The Eight,’ aimed at ramping up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to evolve the way the bank interacts with customers, manages risk, automates processes, and strengthens its technological capabilities. This decisive step forward in its transformation will enable the bank to radically improve its range of products and services through innovation and to structurally enhance its ways of working to boost value creation.

Image: Antonio Bravo, Head of Data at BBVA

BBVA and OpenAI have entered into a strategic alliance aimed at redefining the future of financial services through the use of artificial intelligence. The agreement, announced by Carlos Torres Vila, Chair of BBVA, and Sam Altman, CEO and Co-founder of OpenAI, marks a unique and unprecedented level of collaboration in the financial industry to build a radically customer-centric proposition and to drive a more productive and efficient operating model.

Shares, artwork, real estate… in fact pretty much any asset, can now have a digital twin. Tokenization is reshaping investments by making it possible to split tangible, real-world assets into tokens that can be bought or sold in a matter of seconds, with the utmost transparency and with no intermediaries. So what are the steps involved in turning tangible value from the physical world into its digital counterpart?

BBVA has closed its first growth capital transaction in Finland with Bob W, the Helsinki-born hospitality scaleup focused on redefining the short-stay experience across Europe through technology. This also marks BBVA’s first growth capital deal in Finland, coinciding with the bank’s debut as a key partner at Slush, the renowned global innovation event that gathers more than 13,000 attendees, 2,500 startups and 2,000 investors in Helsinki each year.