Itaú's ia.i hits 300,000 customers, aims for full base by end of 2026

Itaú frames its AI work as a simplicity problem rather than a model problem. CTO Carlos Eduardo Mazzei says the technology should be almost unnoticeable, and the bank's own research with Grupo Consumoteca found 80% of Brazilians want better tools to organize their finances while 65% want a financial copilot.

The build started in 2024 with the first Inteligência Itaú capabilities for specific needs. ia.i is the next stage: a single conversational layer for checking accounts, credit, cards and insurance that also connects customers to human support. Customer DNA, a financial-context layer covering roughly 70 million customers, sits at the center, with GPT-5.x models among the components maintaining and enriching it under governance controls.

Behind the customer-facing product is IARA, which gives teams governed access to several models. Itaú says this addresses cost per token, answer accuracy and responsible AI policy at once — the trade-offs the bank describes as necessary to move quickly in a heavily regulated sector.