Citi has quietly built a 4,000-person internal AI workforce

• Citi's AI accelerators and champions program takes a bottom-up approach to spreading the technology.
• Around 4,000 employees have volunteered to become accelerators and teach peers about AI use cases.
• One champion said he devotes between three and five hours each week to the program.

At Citi, some of the people leading the Wall Street bank's AI push aren't part of a specialized tech team. They're colleagues a few desks over.

Those employees are part of the bank's AI Champions and Accelerators program, which got off the ground in early 2024 and now counts around 4,000 people among its ranks of voluntary AI helpers. At its most basic level, the program aims to have the designated "accelerators" help colleagues within their business units leverage and understand AI tools. The program's approximately 25-30 "champions" help lead the accelerators in their line of business.

Citi's program is one of many ways banks are racing to adopt AI, from offering engineers capstone-style courses to luring top tech talent by promising a seat at powerful managerial tables. To date, Citi's AI tools are available in 84 countries for 182,000 employees. Adoption of the firm's proprietary tools is above 70%, Citi CEO Jane Fraser told analysts during the bank's earnings call last week.

And it's clear that she has high expectations for all employees, including accelerators. In a January memo, she told staff she expected "a more disciplined, more confident" workforce in 2026, and that AI will likely "reshape how work gets done."

Among the bank's range of initiatives to encourage AI uptake, the accelerators and champions model is uniquely embedded throughout teams and based on peer-to-peer interactions, said Carey Ryan, one of the initiative's leaders and the chief of staff for the technology organization.

"A small central team would never be able to reach where we are now," Ryan said.

Peer-to-peer approach

Tech leaders at Citi came up with the program when brainstorming how to engage a wider swath of its population with AI, Ryan said. Originally, her team only planned to have 2,500 accelerators, but they saw more interest than expected and still maintain a waitlist for the program.

While colleagues nominate champions for the position, anyone can volunteer to be an accelerator. The only requirement is being excited about AI, Ryan said.

Josh Goldsmith is the AI champion for internal audit, where he's also the head of digital solutions and innovation. He's been a part of the program since its inception, and said that "demystifying AI" is among its greatest successes so far.

"It's a lot different when you hear from a colleague as to how you can leverage these tools, as opposed to having someone who's, let's say, a technologist trying to push this," he said. "To be able to see someone put it in action: 'Hey, they can do it! I'm just like them, I can do it as well.'"

Ryan also said that the peer-to-peer approach is part of what makes the initiative work, since a more general team couldn't understand all of the job-specific AI use cases across the bank. She added that accelerators have helped host more than 100 Citi AI Days, where they hold demonstrations and answer questions.

The time commitment

Accelerators meet with their cohorts two times each month to participate in demos, learn about new tools, get training, or talk about their recent work. Goldsmith oversees around 50 participants; between attending their meetings and his own bi-monthly champion meetings, he said he devotes between three and five hours to the program each week, on top of his usual job.

The program members can also opt into trainings on topics including agentic AI to earn visual "AI badges," which they can include in their email signatures. There are no specific engagement metrics, though, and people can drop out of the program if it becomes too demanding a time commitment.

"One accelerator might have five interactions, and maybe they're five small interactions," Ryan said. "Another accelerator might have one really big interaction, where they're doing something with hundreds of people."

Among the AI peer coaches in internal audit, between 70% and 80% have stayed in the program, Goldsmith said. He added that, despite the extra hours, participating has given him a broader perspective on AI across Citi, and "a clear vision in terms of what's coming next."

For Carey, there's something of a symbiotic relationship between program leads, participants, and the rest of the bank. Accelerators will explain what they're hearing from their lines of business — where people are struggling, what they might need — as Citi continues to fine-tune its approach to AI. They have, for example, helped Citi tweak AI tools, suggesting enhancements like adding notifications and allowing employees to upload larger files.

"It's an important conduit for feedback back in," she said.