BNY has added the deep-research capabilities of Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise to BNY’s Eliza AI platform to not only provide clients with richer insights and options more rapidly then ever before but also accelerate the transformation of BNY to an AI-powered enterprise.
While the specific operating enhancements that Gemini Enterprise brings to BNY’s Eliza AI platform are certainly significant, I think the larger impact for BNY — once known as Bank of New York — is how the collaboration will accelerate the creation of a true AI culture across the entire massive enterprise.
At the core of that cultural transformation — and in the AI Revolution, cultural change is every bit as vital as technological change — is a compelling AI strategy evangelized by Chief Data and AI Officer Sarthak Pattanaik: “AI for everyone, everywhere, and everything.”
That’s a simple but highly sophisticated vision for the future as it offers a welcoming tone to what can be an overwhelmingly complex and, in some ways, threatening technology. By emphasizing the human-first aspect, BNY hopes to inspire its people to eagerly embrace the vast potential of AI rather than be intimidated by it. A BNY spokesperson shared this human-first and end-to-end perspective with me:
“We have put significant effort into democratizing AI for all our people. Today, all employees at BNY have access to our enterprise AI platform, Eliza, and nearly 100% are trained to use the platform to streamline workflows and find information faster.
We continue advancing Eliza’s embedded capabilities, exemplified by our collaboration with Google Cloud and integration of Gemini Enterprise which will deepen our AI platform’s agentic research capabilities for employees. Gemini Enterprise is powered by Google’s most advanced models and has already been integrated into Eliza for use by our people.”
In my recent podcast episode with Google Cloud CTO Will Grannis, he emphasized the need for business leaders to drive the development of an AI “mindset” as aggressively as they do the ROI of the technology.
“BNY Mellon is a long-time Google Cloud customer, and they’ve adopted Gemini Enterprise at scale and now their employees can use Gemini’s deep research through this Eliza platform that BNY Mellon has built,” Grannis said.
“And this democratizes access to AI research. But, the thing that sticks out to me the most about this technology adoption story and the success of it and the scale of it is that the leadership mindset set them apart.
“So, Sarthak Pattanaik, BNY’s Chief Data and AI Officer, really set the tone for the entire organization when he said their AI strategy is very clear: it’s AI for everyone, everywhere, and everything.
“And that’s the mindset that’s gonna push people into the future,” Grannis said.
That mindset shift is one that’s familiar to Grannis and Google Cloud because parent Google undertook a similar transformation a few years ago, he said.
“In many ways, it parallels our own journey at Google. When Sundar set out the ‘AI-first’ mandate, we found there’s a difference between stating you’re going to be AI-first and actually being, you know, AI-powered.
“And, it gets back to your point around how this has to be a human-centric journey and not a tool-centric journey,” Grannis said.
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CEOs: Which List Do You Want to Be On?
For anyone who thinks the cultural component of AI-centered business transformation is just mushy feel-good stuff, Grannis offered a powerful choice facing business leaders today.
“If we could make two lists, one side would include companies that succeeded with AI in spite of their culture, and then the other would be for those who succeeded in AI because of their culture.”
And one of those lists, Grannis said, would be forever empty.
As they say, choose wisely.
