Huntington Bank Debuts '1866 Studio' AI Platform as Small Business Operating System
Huntington Bank Debuts ‘1866 Studio’ AI Platform as Small Business Operating System #
The Huntington National Bank has unveiled The 1866 Studio, an AI-powered operating system for small business owners developed in partnership with Google Cloud, the Columbus, Ohio-based bank announced on October 19, 2026.
The platform is built on Google Cloud’s Gemini platform, the infrastructure the technology giant uses to build, scale, govern and optimize AI agents, and draws on Google’s multimodal Gemini frontier models. Huntington describes the product as designed to bridge financial intelligence, operational management and business guidance in a single connected environment, enabling owners to coordinate decisions across tools that are often separate.
At launch, The 1866 Studio’s agentic AI capabilities cover three workflows. A business-launch feature walks entrepreneurs through entity selection, registration, licensing and operational setup, generating a tailored action plan for moving from concept to market. A marketing and campaign creation tool uses Gemini’s multimodal capabilities to produce advertising copy, social media content and other collateral customized to each business. A third module, loan readiness, applies AI agents to assess an owner’s financing position, flag potential gaps, explain lender expectations and recommend steps that could improve eligibility.
The system retains relevant business context across tasks, allowing the platform to carry information from one workflow into another without requiring owners to re-enter details. Huntington describes this as a step toward a platform that evolves alongside a business from inception through growth and, ultimately, succession or exit.
Vijay Konduru, Huntington’s head of innovation and AI products, said the platform was built around the specific jobs small business owners need to get done, and that agentic workflows represent just one component of a broader end-to-end system. Rohit Bhat, Google Cloud’s general manager and managing director for financial services, described the collaboration as an attempt to help owners act on information rather than simply access it.
The 1866 Studio is not restricted to existing Huntington customers. Any entrepreneur can register for early access beginning October 19, with a broader commercial launch planned for later in 2026. The bank has not disclosed pricing details.
The announcement comes as U.S. regional banks expand their AI-powered services for small businesses, a segment that has seen limited coverage from large enterprise software providers but accounts for a significant share of bank lending activity.
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