Headquartered in Silicon Valley, H2O.ai operates a cloud-based machine learning platform, H2O AI Cloud, and counts Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo among its investors and customers.

As part of the exlusive Australian deal, Commonwealth Bank will provide H2O.ai’s AI Cloud to its entire organisation, including data scientists, data engineers and business users. The bank will gain a dedicated H2O.ai team of experts, including machine learning engineers and product specialists, to work full time on developing new AI solutions within the bank.

Dr Andrew McMullan, CBA’s chief data & analytics officer says: “Through this partnership, we will be able to better help customers find personalised and relevant offers to save money while they shop across platforms like Little Birdie, Karta, CommBank Rewards, and Klarna, while at the same time driving sales for merchants. We intend to be one of the highest quality, lowest cost sources of leads to our business customers.

“H2O.ai will also help us to better predict bills and forecast cash flows for both retail and business customers so they can plan ahead. Customers want to be in control, and through the combination of our award winning app, powered by artificial intelligence, we can deliver products and services in the moment to manage unexpected expenses or irregular incomes."

CBA is also joining H2O.ai’s AI4Good initiatives, and recently announced the launch of the H2O.ai Wildfire and Bushfire Challenge, a global hackathon to help reduce the economic and climate impact of wildfires and bushfires.

McMullan says the deal will further strengthen the bank's sustainability ambitions.

“We are not just helping customers make better decisions about their finances, but also about how they can reduce and offset their energy usage and carbon emissions," he says. "We will be using our AI models to orchestrate a range of services available across the CBA ecosystem for customers, including through our own products like the Green Loan to help homeowners finance solar or a battery, or through recently announced partnerships such as Amber Energy and CoGo.”