BBVA has doubled the number of staff working on artificial intelligence to more than 400 as it opens new 'AI Factories' in Mexico and Turkey.
The Mexican and Turkish outposts join an existing centre for AI research in Spain.
To staff the new centers, BBVA hired 230 new professionals to join the 200 at the Spanish headquarters. New hires include data scientists, machine learning engineers, developers, data architects and digital product experts.
The new hires are part of a global technology talent recruitment strategy at the Spanish lender. In the past two years, BBVA added 7,187 professionals in the data and technology field to its workforce - a figure it plans to increase in 2024 with 2,700 new hires. Of this amount, 1,225 will take place in Spain for the bank’s headquarters in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona.
Some of the projects BBVA AI Factory is currently working on involve the creation of a fully conversational virtual assistant that will simplify the user experience in digital channels, or the development of 'copilot' tools that will help managers to increase the efficiency of their work and improve the customer relationship model.
"We are fully aligned with the needs of the business areas. We develop our analytical components to address them, which allows us to transfer the maximum value from AI to customers," explains Ignacio Teulón, global head of BBVA AI Factory. "But, at the same time, our cross-cutting approach allows us to see how we can reuse these 'lego pieces' in other, entirely different business challenges. In this way, we optimize the work we do."
The opening of the new centres comes just months after BBVA became the first European bank to forge an alliance with OpenAI, deploying 3000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses among staffers in a bid to increase productivity and process efficiency, while stimulating innovation.
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