BBVA puts AI at the core of banking with OpenAI

Founded in 1857, global financial institution BBVA is partnering with OpenAI in a strategic collaboration to integrate artificial intelligence across customer experiences, operations, software development, and employee workflows. According to OpenAI, the relationship began in 2024 with an initial deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise to 3,000 employees. As adoption grew organically, BBVA expanded access across the organization until more than 100,000 employees globally were using ChatGPT Enterprise, establishing BBVA as one of the largest enterprise adopters of generative AI in the financial sector. The collaboration evolved into a broader strategic alliance centered around The Eight, BBVA's AI transformation roadmap. To manage security and compliance in a heavily regulated industry, BBVA built its adoption strategy around trust, governance, and structured learning. The bank established an organization-wide AI champions network and trained 250 leaders, including the CEO and chairman, to ensure senior executive participation. Employees across legal, risk, engineering, operations, finance, marketing, and customer service have built more than 20,000 custom GPTs for specialized workflows. Examples include the Credit Analysis Pro GPT for credit risk, a Retail Banking Legal Assistant GPT, a Client Experience Assistant GPT in Mexico, and an internal AI assistant in Peru that reduced average query handling times by roughly 80 percent. BBVA and OpenAI continue to work together on long-term transformation initiatives aimed at redesigning banking around artificial intelligence.