By PYMNTS | October 19, 2026
Huntington National Bank has debuted a new operating system designed for small businesses.
The 1866 Studio, named for the year the bank was founded, was built using Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) platform, the tech giant announced Monday (Oct. 19).
“Small business owners shouldn’t have to become experts in every function or in AI to build a successful business,” Vijay Konduru, head of innovation and AI products at Huntington, said in a news release.
“The 1866 Studio is an AI-powered platform designed around the small business jobs to be done. As the product evolves, it’s intended to increasingly support the full range of those jobs across the business lifecycle, from turning an idea into a business to running and growing it, and ultimately preparing for succession, sale or exit.”
According to the release, the operating system will offer agentic AI workflows to meet business owners’ “financial, operational and management” needs.
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By retaining “relevant business context across tasks,” the studio let business owners “orchestrate decisions across disparate tools while maintaining control as their needs evolve,” the release added.
Among the studio’s offerings are built-in AI agents to assist owners with things like navigating the steps needed to launch a business, marketing and campaign creation and evaluating their financial readiness when applying for loans.
“Agentic AI workflows that help carry out tasks are one part of this end-to-end operating system,” Konduru said. “Alongside them are relevant, personalized expert content and an AI assistant that helps owners both monitor their business operations and finances and manage and orchestrate daily work. Together, these capabilities help owners move from advice to action with support that evolves with the business, while they remain in control.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has chronicled the operational challenges facing small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
For example, half of these companies rely on day-to-day sales proceeds or cash already in the bank to stay in operation, with hotels, restaurants and entertainment businesses the most likely to depend on those limited cash resources.
Just 44% said they had access to financing and working-capital solutions, according to PYMNTS Intelligence research on how small businesses finance themselves in times of uncertainty, found in the report “Keeping Score: Why Data Quality Determines Lending Decisions for the Smallest Firms.”
“Among the reasons for that lack of working capital access is the fact that PYMNTS Intelligence found that 57% of financial institutions cite inaccurate or incomplete SMB records as an underwriting obstacle,” the report said. “Outdated information was cited by 52%, inconsistent information by 52% and limited financial histories by 48%.”