BNP Paribas Taps Google For AI But Draws A Firm Line At Highly Confidential Customer Data

BNP Paribas has entered a five-year partnership with Google Cloud to gain access to its public cloud infrastructure and Gemini models, but the French banking giant will keep some highly sensitive customer data and critical operations outside the public cloud.

The agreement gives BNP access to Google's cloud infrastructure and Gemini models as the bank develops AI agents for internal use, covering tasks such as corporate credit memos, sales, trading, research and structuring, Reuters reported.

But the deal does not signal a complete shift away from the bank's existing infrastructure, BNP Group Chief Information Officer Marc Camus told reporters during a call.

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"The fact that we signed this agreement with Google doesn't mean that we will get rid of our on-premises infrastructure," he said.

Camus cited medical information handled by BNP's insurance operations as an example of highly confidential data that the bank does not put on public cloud solutions.

BNP also intends to continue using open-source models and will maintain its collaboration with French AI firm Mistral, using different providers for different applications.

The bank sees potential to apply Google's technology to less sensitive tasks, including invoice processing and data management.

Google said BNP would retain ownership of its data, which would not be used to train, tune or refine its models. The bank said Google's AI agents would be authenticated, restricted to the resources required for their tasks and monitored.

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The approach highlights the challenge for European financial institutions of adopting generative and agentic AI while meeting privacy, operational resilience and data sovereignty requirements.

European regulators are placing greater emphasis on banks' dependence on overseas hyperscalers, with operational resilience and supervision becoming increasingly important under regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

BNP and Google said the bank will retain full ownership of its data, while customer data will not be used to train, tune or improve Google's foundational AI models.

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