Citi Turns to Google Cloud to Update AI and Digital Strategy

Citi has teamed with Google to use artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technology to bolster its digital strategy.

The collaboration, announced Monday (Oct. 28), is designed to use Google Cloud’s expertise to upgrade the banking giant’s infrastructure.

“Citi is on a mission to modernize our infrastructure and increase our safety and soundness so that our businesses can continue to serve our clients with speed and agility,” Tim Ryan, head of technology and business enablement for Citi, said in a news release.

“Leveraging Google Cloud opens up a whole new frontier for us in how we can run applications with faster and more comprehensive outputs, and provide our colleagues with the tools they need to deliver for our clients.”

The partnership will see Citi migrate multiple workloads and applications to Google Cloud’s secure and scalable infrastructure, letting the bank offer improved digital products, streamline employee workflows, and run high-performance computing (HPC) and analytics platforms.

“This includes using advanced HPC capabilities to facilitate the execution of millions of computations daily in Citi’s Markets business,” the release added.

In addition, Citi will use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to deliver generative AI capabilities across the company. Google Cloud, the release added, can help Citi fuel its generative AI initiatives in areas such as developer toolkits, document processing, and digitization capabilities to empower customer servicing teams.

As PYMNTS wrote recently, migrating to the cloud could present a challenge, especially for banks with legacy systems and complex regulatory requirements. The process involves not just a technological shift, but also a reconsideration of operational models and risk management strategies. Data security and compliance considerations are critical, especially when trafficking in sensitive financial information.

However, the upside for financial institutions is considerable, as migrating to the cloud offers lower costs, greater efficiencies and the ability to scale up and down depending on transaction volume and data complexities.

“It’s an interesting time in the banking and the payments industry,” Michael Lozanoff, managing director, global head of merchant services for J.P. Morgan Payments, said in an interview with PYMNTS.

“Many of the systems we ran for decades have reached their shelf life. And one of the things we have done is learn from the past so we can build for the future. We have the unique opportunity to reinvent [banking infrastructure] and build it new — as if we started from scratch.”