David Vélez: How Nubank Serves 140 Million Customers With 10,000 Staff

Nubank founder and CEO David Vélez tells Patrick O’Shaughnessy how a bank with 10,000 employees serves 140 million customers, and why AI will reshape the $10 trillion global banking industry. The conversation, from Invest Like the Best, comes five years after Vélez’s first appearance, when Nubank had 35 million customers. It covers the economics of branchless banking, Nubank’s own foundation model for credit, the end of cash, stablecoins, the company’s launch in the United States, and how Vélez rebuilt the organization around AI after realizing Nubank had fallen behind.

TLDW

Vélez argues that digital banking is still early: about 90% of a $10 trillion consumer financial services industry still runs through incumbent banks and their branches, and Nubank’s cost to serve a customer is about 3% of theirs before AI is counted. He expects cash to disappear, open banking to break customer inertia, and dollar stablecoins to pull billions of people into an offshore system as the world’s roughly 190 currencies shrink to about 10. Nubank is launching in the US and offering a stablecoin-backed account in upwards of 35 countries. Inside the company, a 60-day delay in noticing that AI coding tools had started to work led to a company-wide reset: 120 workflows rebuilt, management layers cut from 10 to 5, and Vélez’s direct reports going from 1 to 20.

Thoughts

Nubank was about 60 days late to notice that AI coding models had started to work, and Vélez says so without dressing it up. The company writes much of its code in Clojure, a niche language the models handled badly through 2025, so its most experienced engineers had written the tools off. A model release in December 2025 changed that. Nobody inside noticed, and it took a trip to California and a round of meetings with early-stage founders to find out. This is a company that has priced credit with machine learning since 2013 and trains its own foundation model. If it can be two months late, a verdict on these tools has a short shelf life anywhere, and the people best placed to issue the old verdict are the ones least likely to run the test again.

What followed is the most concrete account of an AI reorganization I have heard from a public company CEO: 120 workflows mapped and rebuilt, 10 management layers cut to 5, and his own direct reports going from 1 to 20. The useful part is the concession attached to it. Vélez says much of the productivity gain is not from AI at all, and that Nubank would have found gains by redesigning the same work without it. The layers existed because adding a manager is the easy answer when something is on fire during hypergrowth. AI gave the company a reason to revisit decisions it already knew were wrong. The piece to watch is the HR system he describes a few minutes later, where an AI reviews every pull request and gives each employee daily feedback. He frames it as Olympic coaching. An athlete chooses a coach. An employee whose manager watches the same instrumentation in real time has something closer to a monitor, and how staff experience that will decide whether it works.

Vélez expects the world’s roughly 190 currencies to shrink to maybe 10 within 10 to 20 years, with dollar stablecoins keeping the US dollar on top because they let anyone hold it. Coming from the head of the largest private bank in Brazil, that is a striking thing to say out loud. He notes there is very little demand for a Brazilian stablecoin, and Nubank has just announced a stablecoin-backed account for upwards of 35 countries. Put those together and the bank is building an exit from the currencies its own core deposits sit in. That is a sensible hedge if he is right. It is also a politically awkward product if central banks in those countries decide they agree with him.

His bear case explains the timing of the US launch better than the bull case does. With upwards of 65% of Brazilian adults already customers, he says Nubank will soon run out of Brazilians. International growth is a requirement, and his own account of the US makes it the hardest test yet. In Brazil, Nubank attacked consumer interest rates of 500% to 600% a year and banks that would not lend to tens of millions of people. No gap that wide exists in the US. His case there rests on deposits earning 40 basis points and on incumbent profit margins, but online accounts paying far more have existed in the US for years and most of that money has not moved. He names the reason himself: American consumers pick banks on brand, and brand is expensive.

Asked how he would attack Nubank, Vélez says speed, then explains why speed would not be enough: banking licenses that take two to three years, and 20,000 to 30,000 data points on each of 140 million customers across 13 years. Those are the same advantages incumbents once told him he could never match. His Blockbuster rebuttal still applies. Blockbuster had the data and lacked the systems and culture to use it, so Netflix beat it starting from none. By that logic Nubank’s moat holds only while it keeps behaving like the attacker, which is exactly what the 60-day miss called into question.

Key Takeaways

Nubank has 140 million customers and 10,000 employees. Vélez says its competitors have 100 million customers with 100,000 employees and 6,000 branches, which puts Nubank’s cost to serve a customer at about 3% of a traditional bank’s.
Global consumer financial services is roughly a $10 trillion industry, and about 90% of it still runs through incumbent banks and branches. All neobanks and fintechs combined hold less than 10%.
In Brazil, Nubank has close to 120 million customers, upwards of 65% of the adult population, and about 60% of them use it as their primary bank account.
Vélez sorts the problems in financial services into three buckets: access, cost and intelligence. Three billion people have no access to credit, and credit card penetration in Mexico and Colombia is 13%.
US banks hold about $15 trillion in retail deposits and pay around 40 basis points on average while rates sit at 4.5% to 5%. Vélez calls the roughly $600 billion difference a wealth tax that pays for branches and falls hardest on lower-income customers.
Using open banking data, Nubank contacts about 15 million Brazilian customers a day with offers to cover or refinance expensive debt they hold at other banks.
Nubank bought Hyperplane, a Palo Alto startup, and built its own foundation model for credit on proprietary data. It now also uses the model for fraud decisions and in Mexico and Colombia, and will bring it to new markets on day one.
Three outside shifts matter most to him: the end of cash through real-time payment systems such as Pix and UPI, open finance that lets customers take their data to a competitor, and stablecoins. He expects about 190 currencies to become about 10.
Digital payments create a record that lenders can underwrite. A cash-only taco stand in Mexico City cannot get credit today, and about 70% of employment in Brazil is in small businesses.
Nubank was the first credit card for 30 million people in Latin America. Many started with a $20 credit line that incumbents thought was absurd, and that grew to $100 and then $1,000.
Nubank is launching in the US and offering a stablecoin-backed account in upwards of 35 countries. Vélez says the hardest part of the US will be building a brand without simply outspending everyone on marketing.
The metrics he points investors to are customer growth, net promoter score, cost to acquire a customer, lifetime value against that cost, and return on equity. He says Nubank charges no fees and still earns two to three times the return on equity of the incumbents it competes with.
After missing the moment AI coding tools began working by about 60 days, Nubank rebuilt 120 workflows, cut management layers from 10 to 5, and Vélez went from 1 direct report to 20. Senior managers are now asked to build real software every quarter.

Chapters

01:25 Why Banking’s $10 Trillion Disruption Is Still Early

Vélez compares banking today to a world where 90% of people still rent from Blockbuster and Netflix has 10%. Nubank is the exception, having passed the largest incumbent in Brazil by customers and become the primary account for most of them. The smartphone removed the need for branches, and that cost advantage is returned to customers as no fees and better rates. AI multiplies it again.

05:54 Access, Cost and Intelligence

Half the world has no access to credit, and Vélez thinks closing that gap is an underrated engine for global GDP. Cost is the hidden problem in rich countries: near-zero deposit yields, monthly account fees and expensive remittances. Intelligence is the least understood. The top 1% have a private banker who optimizes deposits, taxes and loans, and everyone else has nothing. Financial education never fixed that, he says, because people do not sit down to take classes. AI can do the optimizing on their behalf.

14:40 Moats in the AI Era: Licenses, Data and a Foundation Model

An AI-native startup attacking Nubank would have speed, especially if it starts unregulated, but it would eventually need licenses that take years. Nubank’s data, 20,000 to 30,000 points per customer, feeds a foundation model built after it acquired Hyperplane, whose team had struggled with two-year sales cycles at big banks. Scale alone is not the advantage. Blockbuster had data and no way to use it, and incumbent banks still run 15 systems stitched together from acquisitions.

23:29 The End of Cash, Open Banking and 190 Currencies Becoming 10

Cash-heavy economies such as Mexico and Indonesia are digitizing through real-time payments, which speeds up money and creates the data that makes lending possible. Open finance lets consumers carry their history to a new provider, which weakens the inertia that protects an oligopoly of five or six banks in each region. On currencies, Vélez thinks many fiat currencies are effectively tokens given the fiscal position of the countries behind them. He expects the dollar to stay a reserve currency because of stablecoins, alongside five or six other fiat currencies and a few crypto assets, and says he has always been a Bitcoin fan.

36:01 Nubank’s US Launch and Global Expansion

The 2013 seed deck had nothing specific to Brazil in it. The thesis was always that digitally native companies would transform retail banking globally, and Vélez sees the last 13 years as proof of the model. Lessons from Brazil carried to Mexico better than expected, apart from Mexico’s attachment to cash, where a branchless bank is weaker. The US is competitive but still dominated by a few incumbents funding branches with zero-yield deposits. Some US banks are now more profitable than emerging market banks, which he reads through Jeff Bezos’s line that your margin is my opportunity.

41:53 Lessons From Amazon and Disney on Customer Obsession

Nubank began as a reaction to how painful Brazilian banking was, so Vélez studied companies that win by creating fans. Amazon was the model for customer obsession. Disney was the model for making an experience feel like magic, down to how a park entrance is staged, and Nubank applies that to things as dull as the welcome kit that arrives with a first card. The hard part is holding the value when it costs money, such as turning down a new fee.

45:44 AI Agents as a Customer Segment

Vélez expects agents to matter as much as consumers as a segment, and Nubank has a team studying what an agent needs from a bank. He does not think agents will make every decision in banking, because people want to know where their life savings sit, so the bank still has to market to the human. In Brazil, where most of the country already uses the app, Nubank wants to be the agent itself, including an open one that offers products from other banks.

48:24 Reinventing Nubank With AI

Two things changed most for Vélez in five years. Nubank went from remote to hybrid, and he argues AI strengthens the case for the office, since solo work at home is what AI does best and in-person coordination is what is left for people. The second was the reset after the 60-day miss: a company-wide code red, 120 workflows rebuilt with evaluation infrastructure at each step, and half the management layers removed. A company brain now sends him updates directly, and he ignores the chain of command to talk to whoever has the best information.

59:47 Founder Versus CEO and Impostor Syndrome

Vélez spent a year or two asking whether he should be doing something beyond Nubank and concluded nothing would have more impact than taking it to a billion customers. He had never managed anyone before founding it, hired experienced outside executives, then realized the company needed more of what he already brought: ambition and a willingness to push. Founders are impatient individual contributors and CEOs are patient system builders, and he thinks you need both but should lean founder, especially during a technology shift. His most emotional moments were passing Brazil’s incumbents and launching in Colombia, the country he left at age eight.

1:13:18 The Bear Case, the Bull Case and Choosing a Mission

The bear case is that Nubank saturates its three Latin American markets, fails to internationalize and misses the AI opportunity. The bull case is a multi-country platform in more than 100 countries over the next few decades, riding real-time payments, open finance and AI. His main lesson about entrepreneurship is to get past impostor syndrome quickly, because nobody will care about the company as much as its founder, and that care is what makes the founder the right leader. He thinks AI makes finding a real mission harder, since starting a company is now so easy that people drift toward easy problems.

Notable Quotes

“We have 140 million customers with 10,000 employees. Our competitors have 100 million customers with 100,000 employees in 6,000 branches.”
David Vélez, on Nubank’s cost advantage over incumbent banks

“You still cannot really get ChatGPT to get you a banking license.”
David Vélez, on why AI-native startups cannot simply rebuild a bank

“My view is that 10, 20 years from now those 190 will be maybe 10, because the fiscal situation in so many countries around the world is so dire.”
David Vélez, on the future of the world’s currencies

“We’re a shark in digital waters. When we are forced to compete in the offline world with banking branches, we’re much less competitive.”
David Vélez, on why cash-heavy Mexico was harder than Brazil

“You have to provide a product for the agent and you have to market to the agent and you have to do SEO for the agent.”
David Vélez, on treating AI agents as a customer segment

“We have 65% of Brazil. Very soon we’re going to run out of Brazilians.”
David Vélez, laying out the bear case for Nubank

“I don’t think anybody in the world cares as much for this company as I do.”
David Vélez, on why founders should get past impostor syndrome

Watch the full conversation between David Vélez and Patrick O’Shaughnessy on Invest Like the Best.