Commonwealth Bank has announced it has taken a minority stake and entered into an exclusive partnership with artificial intelligence platform H2O.ai.
The bank led a US$100 million ($135 million) funding round for H2O.ai that gives the Silicon Valley-based company a pre-money valuation of US$1.6 billion ($2.16 billion).
CBA said it will roll out H2O.ai’s cloud-based machine learning platform AI Cloud across the organisation, including to its data scientists, data engineers and business users.
“The partnership will further differentiate and extend our artificial intelligence capability to better anticipate customer needs and reimagine products and digital experiences to meet those needs,” said CBA CEO Matt Comyn.
“This partnership will accelerate our ability to deliver a broader customer proposition through more personalised experiences, which delivers greater value for our customers.”
Mr Comyn said he saw a “broad application” for AI and machine learning technology at CBA, including as part of the bank’s operational processes, fraud protection, lending decisions and risk management.
As the exclusive financial services partner for H2O.ai in Australia and New Zealand, CBA will also work with experts from the company to develop new AI solutions.
“This strategic partnership between the leading global AI Cloud movement and Australia’s largest bank will unleash the juggernaut of co-innovation in AI for payments and further democratise AI with trust and freedom,” said H2O.ai founder and CEO Sri Ambati.
“Our vision is not only to make CBA an AI superpower but make Australia an AI nation as we move to life after COVID.”
The tech investment follows CBA’s announcement last week that it will soon launch crypto trading within its banking app.
CBA chief data and analytics officer Dr Andrew McMullan said the partnership with H2O.ai would be beneficial to its retail and business customers.
“Through this partnership, we will be able to better help customers find personalised and relevant offers to save money while they shop across platforms like Little Birdie, Karta, CommBank Rewards and Klarna, while at the same time, driving sales for merchants,” said Dr McMullan.
“H2O.ai will also help us to better predict bills and forecast cash flows for both retail and business customers so they can plan ahead.”
H2O.ai said its platform is currently used by over 20,000 organisations globally, including more than half of the Fortune 500, and one million data scientists.
