BBVA meets in Barcelona and gathers a hundred companies to talk about AI

BarcelonaArtificial intelligence (AI) has become the center of business debate. For this reason, the BBVA board of directors has met in Barcelona to analyze its opportunities and the strategy linked to it, and has also gathered a hundred client companies from all over Spain during corporate banking days.

Carlos Torres Vila, president of BBVA, highlighted before the entity's governing body that "companies constitute one of the bank's strategic priorities, with the aim of being their strategic partner, accompanying them with financing but also supporting all their needs at each stage of their development." With this meeting, after having left behind the failed takeover bid for Banco Sabadell, BBVA wants to demonstrate "its commitment to Catalonia and its business fabric", and among the issues to be debated are AI and its deployment both in the bank and in companies.

The entity will analyze with the summoned companies from different economic sectors some of their main challenges, such as the necessary transformation derived from the irruption of artificial intelligence or the international economic and geopolitical context.

5,000 M€ in financing

BBVA granted nearly 5,000 million euros in new financing to SMEs and large companies in Catalonia during the first quarter of 2026, 16.8% more than in the same period of the previous year. Furthermore, more than 8,000 Catalan SMEs and large companies chose BBVA as their new bank during the first three months of the year, according to the entity's data.

Within the framework of these conferences, a panel on innovation and artificial intelligence applied to business stands out, with the participation of Antonio Bravo, global head of data at BBVA, and Matt Weaver, solutions engineering leader EMEA from OpenAI, a company with which the BBVA group has an agreement to integrate generative artificial intelligence into banking business and transform both customer relations and the bank's internal operations.

The meetings also include the participation of José García Casteleiro, head of corporate and institutional banking at BBVA in Spain, and Jaime Sáenz de Tejada, global head of corporate and institutional banking at BBVA. Also participating are the head of economic analysis at BBVA Research, Rafael Doménech; the economist and board member of the Bank of Spain Judith Arnal, and the professor in the department of operations management, innovation and data science at Esade Xavier Ferrás.