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Citi said its new Arc platform will use AI agents to “enhance human judgment” by taking on tasks such as research, synthesis, preparation and execution, with the goal of reducing manual effort and accelerating how teams operate day to day.
In Citi’s example, a banker in the bank’s wealth division who might spend hours preparing for a client meeting could instead have an AI agent perform that work “proactively” and deliver the information when needed.
Citi said that by eliminating hours of manual effort, the banker would be able to spend more time building deeper relationships with clients and delivering more personalized, timely service. The bank added that the banker’s role would evolve “from coordinator to architect and adviser.”
Citi said it has built a foundation for this approach, noting that more than 80% of its workers have access to in-house AI tools and use them regularly.
For Arc specifically, Citi said every agent will be monitored, auditable and governed, adding that the bank will be able to track what agents are doing, how they are doing it, and the value they deliver.
According to the announcement, Arc will initially be used by developers to build agents for “specific, well-defined use cases” before a wider rollout.
Citi’s projections included an estimate that the global AI market will exceed $4.2 trillion by 2030, with nearly half of that total—$1.9 trillion—related to enterprise AI.
The bank’s earlier forecast had put the worldwide AI market at $3.5 trillion, with around $1.2 trillion coming from enterprise AI.
Separately, PYMNTS Intelligence/Worldpay research said autonomous AI is moving from “theory into practical commerce.” The research found that 43% of retailers are piloting autonomous AI, while 81% say they trust AI’s ability to function autonomously when the right guardrails have been set up.
PYMNTS also reported that 95% of consumers have at least one concern about agentic commerce. It said 50% would trust agentic commerce more if they knew what anti-fraud measures were in place.
PYMNTS concluded that while the opportunity is real, adoption will depend less on novelty than on whether the industry can make the experience secure, understandable and easy to trust.
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