Citi Ventures is shifting from artificial intelligence to artificial enlightenment.

If we were to go back 50 years in time and demonstrate modern technology to someone, it might appear indistinguishable from magic. To have within the palm of your hand one device that you can use to send instant messages, read books, pay bills, make movies, and even find love would seem unimaginable. Yet this reality has all been made possible by key breakthrough technologies that were revolutionary -- and, some might argue, inevitable. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, once observed that grand-scale technologies are predictable because they have an inherent direction. He uses the analogy of gravity.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving quickly as the go-getter technology for companies across the world to redefine their services and offerings. The technology itself is inching to become better and smarter day by day, giving high adoption goals to newer industries. There is huge interest garnered when one talks about AI in banking and other financial sectors, a domain which is showing very high adoption rates. The rudimentary applications into AI include introducing smarter chatbots for customer service, placing an AI robot for self-service at banks and personalising services for individuals. AI enables the Banks to bring in more efficiency to their back-office in a bid to reduce fraud and security risks.

Citi Ventures has made an investment in the artificial intelligence software company Anaconda, which its parent company Citigroup knows very well. It turns out Citigroup has been using this popular open source software across its entire enterprise for a couple of years. Large banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, BBVA and Ally Bank are among the many with AI deployments. David B. Weiss, principal of the consulting firm Market Structure Metrics, said he has observed "an ever-growing, five-year trend of banks tactically trialing and deploying AI and related technologies like machine learning and robotic process automation to target multiple processes in various parts of their businesses." Jesse McWaters, financial innovation lead at the World Economic Forum, has also been seeing "a significant increase in investment in AI specialist companies" among banks.

EXCLUSIVE – Since its launch in 2010, Citi Ventures has focused on investments that are strategic to its parent, the global financial services provider Citigroup. But when your parent company is a bank that spans the world, you can get involved with a lot of things. The portfolio of Citi Ventures, which comprises 35 companies, extends past financial services & technology into data analytics & machine learning, commerce & payments, security & enterprise IT, to marketing & customer experience. Data analytics & machine learning are areas of particular interest, Managing Director & Global Head of Investing Arvind Purushotham told Bank Innovation. "We have not yet seen the full impact of machine learning" in financial services, Purushotham said, and noted that Citi Ventures was looking closely at this area, which will play a major role in many different areas of financial services.

The venture capital arms of big corporates like Citi, Salesforce, Tencent, and NVIDIA have each made several investments in the AI space. In every year since 2012, corporate VCs have engaged in escalating levels of investment activity to artificial intelligence startups. The trend is poised to reach an all-time high in 2017: in the first half of this year, the venture capital arms of corporations participated in $1.8B worth of disclosed equity funding across 88 deals to private AI companies, already exceeding last year's funding total. If the pace of CVC financing continues, AI startups will see 166 deals in 2017, for a nearly 30% increase from last year's total of 128 deals. In this briefing we will cover the future of cybersecurity as it relates to the implementation of artificially intelligent systems for preventative digital defense.