Huntington National Bank announced on Monday, October 19, 2026, that it is opening early access to The 1866 Studio, an artificial intelligence powered platform built to help small business owners run and grow their companies. The platform uses Google Cloud’s Gemini technology. The Huntington 1866 Studio is open to entrepreneurs who are not Huntington customers.
The product is named for 1866, the year Huntington was founded. The Columbus, Ohio-based bank described it as an operating system for small companies, meant to simplify the financial, operational and management work that owners handle every day. The Huntington 1866 Studio will initially run on eight trained AI agents, a number the bank expects to grow along with the complexity of the tasks the agents handle.
The studio is designed for both aspiring entrepreneurs and existing small business owners, according to the bank. Huntington said the system is meant to simplify the complex, time-consuming work involved in starting and running a business.
What the Huntington 1866 Studio does
The Huntington 1866 Studio’s first version focuses on three areas. It offers business launch support, guiding users through entity selection, registration and licensing to build a customized action plan. It uses multimodal Gemini models to generate marketing collateral, including digital ad copy and social media campaigns. It also provides loan readiness assistance, where AI agents evaluate a business’s financing eligibility, flag gaps in its profile and suggest steps to improve its chances of securing funding.
“Small business owners shouldn’t have to become experts in every function or in AI to build a successful business,” said Vijay Konduru, Huntington’s head of innovation and AI products. “The 1866 Studio is an AI-powered platform designed around the small business jobs to be done. As the product evolves, it’s intended to increasingly support the full range of those jobs across the business lifecycle, from turning an idea into a business to running and growing it, and ultimately preparing for succession, sale or exit.”
Huntington said the studio’s agentic AI workflows are built to carry out tasks. Alongside the agents, the platform includes relevant, personalized expert content and an AI assistant that helps owners monitor business operations and finances and manage daily work. The Huntington 1866 Studio keeps relevant business context across tasks so owners can coordinate decisions across separate tools while staying in control.
Konduru said the capabilities are meant to help owners move from advice to action, with support that evolves as the business does.
Who can use the Huntington 1866 Studio
Early access sign-ups opened October 19, and they are not limited to current Huntington customers. Interested small business owners and entrepreneurs, whether or not they bank with Huntington, can sign up for the Huntington 1866 Studio through the bank’s waitlist page at Huntington.com/The1866Studio. Huntington plans a full launch later this year, though it has not named a date.
The bank has not disclosed pricing for the studio. It has also not said how deeply Gemini will be woven into its other digital banking products beyond the studio.
The Huntington 1866 Studio and the Google Cloud partnership
The Huntington 1866 Studio builds on the bank’s multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud to modernize its technology and develop governed AI capabilities. Through the partnership, Huntington said it continues to explore new ways to use technology built with Google Cloud to improve experiences for customers, colleagues and the communities and businesses it serves.
“We have a desire to have the most compelling value proposition for small businesses in the country,” said Huntington President Brant Standridge. He said the bank learned from its roughly 500,000 small business customers that owners wear many hats, handling daily tasks far beyond the core work of their companies.
Huntington Bancshares is a $284 billion asset regional bank holding company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and a top 10 U.S. commercial bank. The Huntington National Bank and its affiliates operate more than 1,400 branches in 21 states. Standridge described the Huntington 1866 Studio as the next step in the bank’s 160-year effort to help businesses thrive.