Santander Puts AI Business Value at €194 Million in Nine-Month Results

Banco Santander valued AI-related business value at €194 million for the first nine months of 2026, while Meta and Alphabet tied the technology to growth without disclosing a separate financial total.

The bank's figure covers the nine months ended Sept. 30. It combines incremental revenue, cost savings and lower loan-loss provisions from its Data & AI initiatives. Santander classifies it as an alternative performance measure that is not defined by the applicable financial-reporting framework. Auditors did not audit or review the measure.

Meta linked its AI investments to incremental advertising revenue through stronger engagement, recommendations and monetization. The company's revenue rose 26% to $64.601 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, but Meta gave no AI-specific revenue figure.

Alphabet's Google Cloud revenue climbed 103% year over year to $30.709 billion. Growth included enterprise AI infrastructure and solutions, core cloud services and sales of TPU systems. Alphabet did not separate AI revenue from those other sources.

Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said, “I think this is the first quarter I’ve really seen AI start to improve actually my P&L on a tangible basis.” Core operating income rose 11% in U.S. dollars and 10% at constant currencies to $6.036 billion. Reported operating income fell 59% in U.S. dollars to $1.843 billion, partly reflecting a $1.9 billion partial impairment charge and higher expenses. Novartis did not quantify AI’s contribution.

Standard Chartered CFO Manus Costello linked AI to customer relationships and operating leverage, but the company gave no AI-specific figure. Operating income was $5.8 billion, up 14% at constant currencies excluding notable items. Expenses were $3.4 billion, up 9% on the same basis.

Carlsberg CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen said the company had not seen AI benefits at scale. Carlsberg's reported revenue rose 4.9% to DKK 25.281 billion, while organic revenue growth was 3.0%.

The results offer no shared measure of AI’s financial contribution: Santander combined different forms of value, while the other companies did not isolate an AI-specific total.