Technology has been one of the pillars for Nubank to continue to challenge the status quo. When the bank began its operations in 2013, offering only a credit card product, it was already understood that the key to Nubank’s growth and development as a financial institution lay in Data Science. From the outset, it was clear that this was the fuel that would help Nubank reinvent financial services, battling against complexity and empowering people on a daily basis.

Throughout its journey, Nubank has reached important milestones. As of April/2023, Nu is proud to serve 80 million customers in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, offering a wide range of products that helps customers with the five stages of their financial journey: spending, saving, investing, and protecting. 

Nubank’s CTO, Vitor Olivier, believes that AI represents the next quantum leap in technology, akin to the revolutions sparked by personal computing, the internet, mobile phones and cloud computing. For Nubank, AI investment is not about simply keeping pace with technological evolution but about capitalizing on their existing strengths to unearth new opportunities and enhance customer experience.

As it gained traction and investors recognized its potential, Nubank leveraged its financial success to acquire strategic entities that would further strengthen its technological prowess, as example of Cognitect and Olivia companies in 2021.

Olivia specializes in leveraging advanced AI algorithms to provide users with financial advice and superior personal financial management. With this acquisition, Nubank gained access to cutting-edge AI technology and expertise, enabling them to refine their customer experience through personalized, data-backed recommendations. In another strategic move, Nubank acquired Cognitect, a leading software consultancy firm renowned for its expertise in functional programming languages and application development. This acquisition has allowed Nubank to bolster its technological capabilities at various levels, ranging from backend infrastructure to software architecture. Through Cognitect’s (now called Nu North America) expertise, Nubank can now optimize its systems for scalability, reliability, and modularity, ensuring a seamless experience for their rapidly growing number of users.

In fact, Nubank’s use of AI goes beyond business growth—it’s about making a positive difference in people’s lives by helping them have a healthier relationship with money. This article delves into the role of AI at Nubank and how it’s shaping the future of financial services.

Since its inception, Nubank has been at the forefront of using technology to revolutionize the financial services sector. The company has relied on principles such as adaptability, immutability, functional programming, modularization, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) to foster fast, safe, and continuous change to its systems. The ultimate goal has always been to create a generational company that is anti-fragile and can adapt to the changing technological landscape.

A pillar of Nubank’s technological prowess is its robust infrastructure and tech stack. Nubank employs a microservice architecture primarily written in Clojure, a language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This choice reflects the company’s commitment to leveraging powerful, flexible technology to deliver top-tier financial services. Coupled with a strong reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Nubank ensures high scalability and resilience in its operations.

Datomic, their primary database, allows for robust and efficient data management, while Kafka powers real-time event sourcing and streaming. This intricate technology stack is crucial in understanding the capabilities and potential of Nubank’s AI applications.

According to Nubank’s CTO, Vitor Olivier, “AI is poised to be the next step-change in how the world operates, much like personal computing, the internet, and mobile+cloud were in their respective eras”. For Nubank, investing in AI isn’t just about keeping up with the times, it’s about leveraging their existing strengths to unlock new opportunities and deliver superior customer experiences.

A customer-centric approach

One of the ways Nubank is leveraging AI is through its real-time event AI, Precog. Designed to improve customer service interactions, Precog uses AI to predict customer needs in real-time, allowing for more efficient and targeted customer service.

Precog’s success lies in its unique approach of treating customer events such as app clicks and transactions as a language that signals intent. By applying the same conceptual frameworks used in language model learning, Precog improves Nubank’s ability to predict customer intent during customer service interactions by over 50%.

Moreover, Nubank sees AI as a tool to solve various customer-related problems. From recommendation engines to automated support and productivity initiatives, the company is continually finding ways to deploy AI to enhance their customer experience. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As Olivier notes, “the maturation of prompt-engineering and the creation of foundational models that go beyond natural language will unlock new, yet unknown applications of AI at Nubank”.

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The future of AI at Nubank

The future of AI at Nubank is as exciting as it is promising. The company is not only looking to create foundational models based on financial data and customer interactions but also to explore the use of AI in areas beyond natural language. This exploration will be supported by Precog and other similar initiatives, which will continue to evolve to support a multitude of product lines and use cases.

Nubank’s AI journey is not without its challenges, though. With a growing product portfolio and increasing complexity, the company has to constantly automate and scale up real-time data processing and feature engineering. However, these challenges only serve to make the journey more exciting and the victories more satisfying.

Why AI at Nubank

Nubank’s mission goes beyond just utilizing AI for business growth. At its core, Nubank’s AI journey is about using technology to improve people’s lives. Money is a crucial aspect of society, connecting people to various aspects of their lives. A fair, transparent, and customer-focused approach to financial services can be an immense force for good.

By using AI, Nubank aims to help people have a healthier relationship with their money, making their lives fundamentally better. As Olivier puts it, “working with AI at Nubank offers the opportunity to be part of a mission that goes beyond profit, one that seeks to make a real difference in people’s lives”.

In conclusion, Nubank’s AI journey is both a testament to its commitment to technological innovation and its dedication to improving the lives of its customers. With its customer-centric approach and its innovative applications of AI, Nubank is charting a new course in the financial services sectorーone that promises to transform the way people interact with their money.

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