Sberbank expects to make 550 bln rubles from implementing AI solutions in 2026 - CEO

MOSCOW. Dec 10 (Interfax) - Sberbank is expecting the overall effect of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to reach 550 billion rubles in 2026, CEO Herman Gref said.

"The overall effect of implementing AI across all areas will reach 550 billion rubles in 2026. This will also have an impact on the growth in revenue from individualized offers, as well as pricing, the decrease in credit exposure and cost optimization," Gref said at the Sberbank Investor Day.

"In our basic process, there is an AI assistant which generates loan offers for clients. Today, 96% of corporate clients who use loan services have already received individual loan offers [...] AI helps us to protect the interests of our clients: we create AI assistants who process over 500 billion cyber security incidents each day - that is 10 times more than four years ago," he said.

He said that so far, Sberbank had implemented hundreds of AI assistants that it uses in key processes, and over a thousand are still being developed. It is also developing multi-assistant systems, in which every assistant performs its own role in interaction with the others.

"We should have a significant increase in investment specifically in generative AI technology next year. We will invest around 600 billion rubles over the next three years overall, including 2026. The majority of the investment will come in 2026 at around 10% of 2025 operating income, while it will be less than 10% in 2026," Taras Skvortsov, Sberbank deputy management board chairman and CFO, said.

"The more we invest in fundamental models, the more we consequently see the potential of the technology. We are investing in products, in implementation, and in our internal processes, for clients, service, and so on. Therefore, we have to invest upfront at the initial stage to reap the benefits later," Skvortsov said.

Sberbank is planning to earn 450 billion rubles from the use of AI technologies by the end of this year.

Gref previously said that investments in developing AI totaled 100 billion rubles last year, 150 billion this year, and would more than double to 350 billion rubles in 2026.

Gref last December said that investments in generative AI should begin paying off within two to three years. He forecast that the bank would be close to breaking even by 2025, though investment would still be in the red for the time being.

"I think we'll start monetizing this in 2026-2027," he said.