Strategic partnership positions OTP Group and the Ministry for Innovation and Technology (ITM) of Hungary as the European AI leader, enabling rapid transformation across the bank and the region for the next decade

SambaNova Systems, the company building the industry’s most advanced software, hardware and solutions to run artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and OTP Group, the leading banking group in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), today announced a strategic partnership to build the fastest AI supercomputer in Europe. Together, they will deploy a multi-rack AI system, built on SambaNova Dataflow-as-a-Service GPT,  for the most advanced language model in the world at a commercial bank. The system will be provided as a national AI resource to the public sector, private industry, and higher education in cooperation with the Ministry for Innovation and Technology (ITM) of Hungary.

“This is a unique collaboration between OTP Group, ITM, and SambaNova Systems to provide an incredible resource to the country and the Central and Eastern European region,” said Péter Csányi, Deputy CEO, head of Digital Division at OTP Group. “We are pleased to announce that this groundbreaking supercomputer will represent a unique AI capability to build GPT-3 level language models for languages across CEE.”

With this partnership, OTP Group takes the European lead in AI research and development. The Bank’s 17 million customers will experience faster, more personalized AI-based financial services with a supercomputer that can  process large amounts of text-based information and data in a short time. By significantly speeding up workflows and taking over repetitive tasks, creating more space for service development and human creativity, the innovation will have a positive impact on OTP Group’s employees across Europe.

“OTP Group has an impressive industry-leading plan to make AI its key technology driver for the next decade. With the support of ITM, the AI environment that they’re creating will provide accessible, cutting-edge infrastructure for universities, research centers, public and private organizations across Hungary,” said Prof. Dr. László Palkovics, Minister for Innovation and Technology in Hungary.

The partnership between OTP Group and SambaNova Systems is a multi-year collaboration agreement to deploy SambaNova’s Dataflow-as-a-Service GPT solution and build a one-of-a-kind Hungarian language model, one of the most complicated languages in the world, to be followed by the unique languages of other OTP Group countries. With this implementation, the bank will transform itself with AI and the power of SambaNova GPT, cutting across every corner of the enterprise, from the front office to the back office.

“Large language models are quickly becoming the primary interface to the enterprise and AI will drive the transformation of industries. This deployment at OTP Group will showcase what’s possible with advanced AI across document-heavy industries, such as banking and financial services,” said Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of SambaNova Systems.

The deployment is a technical feat; the project, had it been developed and deployed in-house, would have taken the bank several years and extensive human capital resources. With SambaNova, OTP Group can deploy in days or weeks. Once deployed, this AI supercomputer will enable OTP Bank to advance forward with AI and make further inroads across the global financial market.