US lender Huntington Bank unveiled The 1866 Studio, an AI platform for small businesses built on Google Cloud's Gemini platform. The service combines business guidance, financial insight, digital tools and access to human advisers. It includes agent-driven workflows for launch planning, marketing material and loan-readiness assessment. Early access is open to people who are not yet the bank's customers.

What it means: Banks are looking for ways to become an everyday tool for small businesses rather than just the place where the account sits. Huntington is trying to bring together tasks now spread across separate programs: business planning, marketing, cash flow and preparing for financing. Opening the platform to non-customers shows the aim is to win new clients before they even open an account, at a stage where owners need guidance more than products. The loan-readiness assessment is especially interesting, since it could cut rejections and approval times, but it also raises questions about how transparent the criteria are. In Greece, where very small firms are the backbone of the economy and access to credit remains hard, such a tool could draw on myDATA, card terminal and bank data to give a realistic picture of a business. Greek banks have already invested in digital channels, and the next step could be practical AI-driven advisory support.

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Related service: myDATA integrations

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