During Capital One's Q3 2026 earnings call on October 20, 2026, CEO Richard Fairbank described its multi-year technology transformation as an AI project from the start.
"We set out to rebuild our technology from the bottom of the tech stack up," Fairbank said, adding that "the objective function of the rebuild was AI."
The rebuild began in 2013, and Fairbank said the bank was working backwards from "having a modern tech company powered by AI" in "a world where everything was going to be about AI in real time."
He acknowledged the bank did not anticipate how the technology would develop. "We did not predict generative AI, and we did not predict agentic AI, yet AI was the objective function of this transformation," he said. Had the bank known, he said, "we would have built exactly what we built."
Wells Fargo analyst Don Fandetti noted that Capital One "ranked pretty well on an AI industry report" and asked whether the bank's AI investments were producing specific revenue or market share gains, and whether management would put numbers on them.
Fairbank declined. "We certainly do not intend to quantify the benefits," he said. He did describe where the bank expects AI to have an effect.
"AI will be transformative for the customer experience," Fairbank said, pointing to "the opportunity with modern technology data and AI to transform the entire data ecosystem" inside banks. "The pace of advancement in AI is just breathtaking," he said, adding that "companies will adopt AI and get a lot of benefits."
In response to Piper Sandler analyst Bill Carcache on how the franchise is positioned for a future credit downturn, Fairbank said the bank uses "AI-based monitoring that is full file" in some areas. "Instead of manual, it is automated," he said, while noting it is still "the early days" for some of that monitoring.
Fairbank said in prepared remarks that Capital One continues to "lean into investments in modern technology, data, and AI." Responding to Bank of America analyst Mihir Bhatia, he said much of that investment is already reflected in reported results and will continue to increase, including further spending on the Discover network.
As of the end of September, 100% of new Discover card originations ran on Capital One's tech stack, with the back-book conversion expected to finish in the first quarter, according to the company.
Capital One reported Q3 2026 net income of $3.5 billion, or $5.61 per diluted share, on total net revenue of $16.3 billion. Net interest margin was 8.41%, and Global Payment Network volume rose 25% year over year to $191 billion.