Huntington Bank launched a new AI operating system. The Huntington National Bank announced The 1866 Studio on October 19, 2026, positioning it as a connected platform for prospective and current small business owners. Early-access signups opened the same day and are available to people who are not Huntington customers.
The product is built with the Gemini platform, Google Cloud’s AI platform, and combines business guidance, financial intelligence, digital tools and human expertise in one experience. Its purpose is to simplify the complex, time-consuming work involved in starting and running a business—an ambition that sounds sensible because small business ownership has never suffered from a shortage of paperwork.
The 1866 Studio takes its name from the year Huntington was founded. The timing also gives the bank a way to connect its long history with an operating system designed around newer forms of AI support.
One system for the jobs small businesses need done
The operating system will provide agentic AI workflows across the financial, operational and management needs of business owners. Those workflows are designed to streamline complex work and help owners move from information to intelligence to action, while coordinating decisions across tools that would otherwise remain separate.
Owners are meant to stay in control as their needs change. The initial capabilities cover several stages of the business lifecycle, including turning business ideas into actionable plans, working through startup requirements, strengthening a brand, identifying funding sources and planning for growth.
The business launch capability uses built-in AI agents to guide owners through entity selection, registration, licensing and operational setup. It then generates a tailored action plan, giving entrepreneurs a structured path through tasks that often arrive as a confusing pile of requirements.
A marketing and campaign creation capability uses multimodal Gemini models to produce marketing collateral, digital advertising copy and social media campaigns. The platform also includes a loan readiness capability that applies AI-powered agents to assess financing readiness, flag potential gaps, explain lender expectations and recommend steps to improve eligibility.
AI support that extends beyond a single task
Vijay Konduru, Huntington’s head of innovation and AI products, said the platform is “designed around the small business jobs to be done” and is intended to support the full range of those jobs across the business lifecycle, from idea through growth and, eventually, succession, sale or exit.
Konduru said agentic workflows are one part of the end-to-end operating system, alongside personalized expert content and an AI assistant. That assistant helps owners monitor operations and finances, coordinate day-to-day work and receive support that evolves as the business does.
The scale of the audience is clear. Over 33 million small businesses were operating across the United States as of 2025, they employed nearly half of the nation’s workforce, and about 99% of businesses in the US were small businesses.
Brant Standridge, president of Huntington Bank, said that for more than 160 years, helping businesses thrive has been central to Huntington’s purpose. He described The 1866 Studio as “the next evolution of that commitment.”
The launch puts Huntington’s AI strategy in front of a market that needs practical coordination more than another isolated chatbot. The 1866 Studio is designed to connect planning, funding, marketing, operations and financial monitoring in one system, with early access open beyond the bank’s existing customer base.
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