Global Head of Brand & Creative

Nubank launches AI tool that promises impartial investment recommendations. The tool analyzes customers' portfolios and suggests adjustments according to five criteria, without executing investments automatically. The bank seeks to expand its investment business in Brazil. October 19, 2026 | 03:37 AM Bloomberg Línea - Nubank announced this Thursday, October 15, one more step to increase profitability per customer and establish itself in one of the most contested territories by large banks and brokerages in Brazil: investment management and consolidation. The neobank presented Nu Smart Invest, a functionality based on artificial intelligence and data analysis that evaluates the state of the client's portfolio, assigns it a score of up to one thousand points, and suggests adjustments to the allocation in a personalized way. The initiative places Nubank in a technological race that is gaining momentum among the country's main financial institutions. In recent months, major competitors such as Itaú Unibanco (ITUB4), BTG Pactual (BPAC11), and XP Investimentos, as well as fintechs such as Decade and CloudWalk, with its Pierre platform, have also intensified the integration of generative algorithms and automated portfolio diagnostics to guide retail and middle-income investors. Nu Smart Invest analyzes five pillars (diversification, performance, liquidity, protection, and efficiency) to identify gaps in the portfolio held in the same app. A client who declares themselves conservative and concentrates 100% of their wealth in CDBs paying 100% of the CDI, for example, receives a report that exposes the imbalance and suggests assets capable of making the portfolio more robust relative to the stated objective. "Recommendations do not mean a guarantee of performance. It means that the assets you can work with in diversification, performance, liquidity, protection, and efficiency make a portfolio more robust," said Patricia Whitaker, Nubank's director of investments. The decision to invest, she stresses, lies with the client: the product does not make any purchase automatically. The product is beginning to be offered gradually and, for now, only in the local market, despite global ambition. The service is open to all customers, regardless of segment and at no charge. "For now it has no cost; we haven't even discussed that topic," she said, adding that the focus is on generating an "experience" for customers. The only requirement is to have at least 1 real invested, since the analysis is based on the existing portfolio. A move toward a consolidated view is also in sight, bringing together the client's investments at other institutions based on Open Finance data. Neutrality as an argument. Brazil's investment ecosystem has historically coexisted with the debate over the commission model of advisors and brokerages, in which recommending a product can create a conflict of interest between the intermediary and the end client. It is at this point that Nubank builds the discourse for its new product. "The idea is to use data intelligence and artificial intelligence to carry out an impartial diagnosis of the portfolio and, with that, present personalized suggestions. There is no race for a commercial asset that generates a commission," Whitaker said. According to the executive, each recommendation starts from the portfolio the client already has, their risk profile, and their objective, and is accompanied by an explanation, asset by asset, of how it affects the composition of their wealth. This explanatory component, in the director's opinion, also fulfills an educational function within the app experience. "The client does not need to know what an LCA is, but will understand why an LCA is recommended for their portfolio," she said. She mentioned as an example the investor who, out of fear of long terms, always invests in six-month securities and ends up paying a higher income tax rate, or the case of a fund and an ETF with the same objective but different costs. Nubank's strategy with this product is part of an initiative to go beyond products such as the payment account and credit card, in order to capture a larger share of the wallet of its more than 118 million customers in Brazil. The technology behind Nu Smart Invest was developed internally over the course of this year, with cycles of small tests and customer surveys to define the analysis parameters. Among users who have already tested the tool, the executive says she has observed investments in assets they would hardly buy on their own, once they understand the logic of the recommendation.

Simply Wall St has highlighted three founder-led US stocks for investors who want company leaders with a stake in the outcome. The picks come from a screener that surfaces 25 more such businesses. Credo Technology Group Holding makes high-speed connectivity chips and cables. It earns about $1.6 billion from semiconductors and has a market value near $40.7 billion. Its DustPhotonics acquisition pushes it into longer-range, higher-bandwidth products. Oracle, shaped by Larry Ellison's ownership, draws most of its $71.8 billion revenue from cloud and software. Its market value is near $428.7 billion. Nu Holdings, co-founded by David Vélez, has $8.4 billion in banking revenue and a market value of about $77.9 billion. Brazil's central bank will require it to obtain a full banking licence by 2026.

Small businesses spend 468 hours per year on financial bureaucracy, survey says. Study, conducted by Nu Empresas in partnership with Bridge Research, shows that entrepreneurs devote 9 hours per week to administrative and cash management tasks. 08/10/2026 16:13 Updated 2 hours ago Running a small business in Brazil requires entrepreneurs to take on multiple roles. In addition to selling, providing services, and serving customers, they also take on administrative, tax, and banking tasks. According to the survey "Small businesses and the lack of time due to bureaucracy", conducted by Nu Empresas (Nubank's business unit for legal entities) in partnership with Bridge Research and released this Thursday (8/10), owners of micro and small businesses devote, on average, nine hours per week to financial and bureaucratic obligations. In a year, this represents approximately 468 hours consumed by operational routines that do not generate direct revenue. The survey interviewed 1,200 entrepreneurs from all regions of the country, including customers and non-customers of the financial institution, comprising 560 individual microentrepreneurs (MEI) and 640 micro and small enterprises (MPE) - of which 431 belong to the commerce/retail profile and 209 to the offices/consulting practices segment. The demographic profile shows that respondents have an average age of 45, average company operating time of 7 years, and average annual revenue of R$ 210,000.