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1 / 4Santander puts a number on what AI earned it: 194 million euros in nine months×

The payoff

Banks and drugmakers, not just the companies selling AI, are starting to report its payoff, CNBC reported on Sunday. Santander said AI generated 194 million euros ($216 million) of business value in the first nine months of the year, across revenue and costs, though its CFO José García Cantera said AI is now "embedded in all the processes" and hard to isolate.

The drugmaker

Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan called the third quarter "the first quarter I've really seen AI start to improve actually our P&L on a tangible basis," without putting a figure on it; core operating income rose 10% at constant currency to $6.04 billion.

The others

Standard Chartered credited AI for income growing faster than costs. Carlsberg's chief executive said the brewer is not yet seeing benefits at scale.

The scale

Santander's 194 million euros is the only hard number in the set, against Stanford's count of $581.7 billion of corporate AI investment in 2025.

Sources and the full story

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Santander puts a number on what AI earned it: 194 million euros in nine months

Banks and drugmakers, not just the companies selling AI, are starting to report its payoff, CNBC reported on Sunday. Santander said AI generated 194 million euros ($216 million) of business value in the first nine months of the year, across revenue and costs, though its CFO José García Cantera said AI is now "embedded in all the processes" and hard to isolate. Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan called the third quarter "the first quarter I've really seen AI start to improve actually our P&L on a tangible basis," without putting a figure on it; core operating income rose 10% at constant currency to $6.04 billion. Standard Chartered credited AI for income growing faster than costs.

Carlsberg's chief executive said the brewer is not yet seeing benefits at scale. Santander's 194 million euros is the only hard number in the set, against Stanford's count of $581.7 billion of corporate AI investment in 2025. SourcesB

Sources

• BCompanies promised AI gains: here's how the payoff showed up in earnings (CNBC)cnbc.com

This story ran in the Afternoon Brief of November 1st 2026.