David Vélez - Building Nubank and the Future of Global Banking

Anthropic

Across the shows: 15 speakers in other episodes, 8 bullish and 25 bearish calls, past 30 days

• David Vélez · NubankBullish

  Anthropic's Opus 4.6 in December 2025 marked the point when AI coding models actually worked.

  Through 2025 Nubank kept testing models for Clojure programming, and they performed so poorly that its most experienced engineer said the approach would not work. Opus 4.6 arrived in December 2025, and Vélez says that is when many people realised AI coding actually worked. Nubank missed that switch at the time and only caught it about sixty days later. Once it did, it tested newer GPT models as well and found they also handled Clojure very well. He treats the sixty-day gap as a large competitive difference between Nubank and best-in-class AI adopters.

  “Opus 4.6 came in in December '25. And that was sort of the moment that a lot of people suddenly realized, No, this actually works.”at 45:25

Banks

• David Vélez · Nubank

  US banks earn about $600B from paying almost no yield on deposits, which will flow back to consumers.

  US retail deposits total about $15 trillion, but banks pay about 40 basis points on average, while policy rates are around 4.5% to 5%. That means about $600 billion a year goes to banks to fund branches. A digital bank would return that money to consumers. He calls the lack of yield a wealth tax that falls hardest on lower-income savers. He argues that competition from digital models will compete this profit pool away. He says the same pattern holds in Mexico and Brazil, where about 70% of big incumbent deposits pay zero.

  “banks pay on average about 40 basis points on yield a year... look at the calculation of those $15,000,000,000,000 that's more or less $600,000,000,000 that are going to banks to pay for banking branches”at 7:59

• David Vélez · Nubank

  Open banking will weaken inertia and make the concentrated banking oligopoly more fragmented and competitive.

  Under open banking, consumers own their data across all institutions and can share it with anyone. Today, incumbents benefit from customer inertia because a history cannot move to a new provider. Open banking reduces that barrier and increases competition for consumer data. Banking is concentrated: five or six US banks hold about 60% to 70% of assets, and Europe, Asia and Latin America look similar. He expects a less concentrated and more fragmented system, with lower fees and costs.

  “The moment that you can connect all your history from all your services and pass it to somebody else, you're reducing that inertia and you're enabling more competition for your data.”at 23:53

• David Vélez · Nubank

  US banking is still branch-heavy and incumbent-dominated, so digital natives can take share.

  US banking is still dominated by a few incumbent and community banks and runs through physical branches. Vélez argues incumbents must charge high fees and pay near-zero yield on deposits to fund that physical infrastructure. Nubank's advantages (mass-market credit, global payments, and a consumer-obsessed culture) target that gap. He notes US consumers rate brand as a key reason for choosing banks, which makes building a brand the hardest part of entering the US. He expects to build it more capital-efficiently than funnel marketing, but he sees the competition as real, including many strong US neobanks and fintechs.

  “Most of the banking in The US is still happening through banking branches, as if most of their video and media were happening through blockbusters. They still need to charge a lot and they need to pay zero yield effectively to be able to fund this physical infrastructure.”at 35:46

Payments & fintech

• David Vélez · Nubank

  Digital banks have under 10% of consumer financial services, so incumbent share loss has barely started.

  About $10 trillion of global consumer financial services still runs through bank branches owned by incumbents. Neobanks and fintechs together hold less than 10% of that market. He compares this to Blockbuster, which held about 90% of video rental when Netflix held about 10%. He argues the migration from incumbents to digitally native firms is early in financial services. He expects a significant shift of share from incumbents to digital companies over the next 10 to 20 years, with market size also growing as billions of people enter the banking system.

  “still something like 90% of that industry goes through banking branches and is owned by incumbent banks... that migration from incumbents to digitally native companies is still very, very early in financial services.”at 2:27

• David Vélez · Nubank

  Remittance fees of 5% to 10% will trend to zero because moving money is just moving bits.

  About $100 billion leaves the US in remittances, and senders pay 5% to 10% per transaction. He says moving money is simply moving bits. In a more competitive environment, that fee should trend to zero. He includes this in a wider list of cost pools, including monthly account fees of about $5 to $10 in the US, that digital competitors will compete away.

  “People pay 5% to 10% per transaction. Will go to zero. Remittances, moving money is you're moving bits. That will trend towards zero in a more competitive environment.”at 7:59

Enterprise AI adoption & AI software

• David Vélez · Nubank

  AI-native fintech startups face licensing and regulatory limits that slow their speed to launch banking products.

  He agrees AI helps startups move fast, especially without regulation. But banking is regulated, so speed has limits. He notes that AI can rebuild software strategy, but cannot secure a banking license or make regulators approve in six months rather than two or three years. Nubank already holds banking licences in several countries, and it still has to move at a set pace with regulators. This means an AI-native startup faces a hard constraint even as software is reshaped.

  “you can ask Charge EPT or Codex to rebuild an entire software strategy, but you still cannot really get Charge EPT to get your banking license.”at 14:02

• David Vélez · Nubank

  AI will transform HR by giving employees daily, specific coaching, replacing infrequent manager reviews.

  Vélez argues that most performance feedback is a manager's review every six months, which is dominated by recency bias and is rarely actionable. He compares this to an Olympic athlete who gets coaching every day. He expects AI to provide that kind of daily, specific feedback. Coding copilots would review pull requests and suggest better tool use, and AI could give designers and product managers similar guidance. Managers with access to this data would also have far better information than they get from low-density one-on-ones. He says almost no one is discussing how AI will reinvent HR, and he is building this into Nubank's HR operating system.

  “I think it's going be transformational. And I think this is an area that I'm surprised so few people have discussed about how AI is going to reinvent HR in the organizations.”at 50:50

Stablecoins & crypto policy

• David Vélez · Nubank

  Fiat currencies will shrink from about 190 to about 10 as people shift savings offshore into stablecoins.

  People who are increasingly mobile will operate across their domestic fiat system and a global offshore system. Many citizens distrust their banks and currencies, and they increasingly want to bank offshore, using stablecoins and Bitcoin. He says fiscal conditions in many countries are so dire that much fiat money is not real money and is effectively crypto tokens. Over 10 to 20 years, he expects the roughly 190 currencies to fall to about 10. He describes two parallel systems that will interrelate.

  “Today, there's about 190 currencies around the world. My view is that ten, twenty years from now, those 190 will be maybe 10. Because the fiscal situation in so many countries around the world is so dire”at 25:13

US dollar

• David Vélez · Nubank

  US dollar stablecoins will help the dollar keep its reserve status, though it won't be unique.

  He argues that US stablecoins democratize access to the dollar. The US fiscal position is deteriorating, but it is still better than that of more than 100 other countries, many with weak central bank balance sheets. Demand for US stablecoins is strong, while demand for a Brazilian stablecoin is very small. He expects the dollar to keep its reserve-currency power for a very long time. He also expects five or six other fiat currencies and a few crypto tokens to become savings diversifiers, so the dollar will not be unique.

  “[US stablecoins] ultimately will be the big savior or one of the biggest saviors of the US dollar because it democratizes access to the US dollar.”at 26:36

Emerging markets

• David Vélez · Nubank

  Digitizing cash-based small businesses will create credit access worth trillions for billions of people.

  Most of the world economy is offline and cash-based, so transactions go unrecorded and cannot support credit. Once a street vendor's sales are recorded digitally, the vendor can show cash flow to a bank and borrow to expand. About 70% of employment in Brazil is in small businesses, and similar patterns occur in India and Southeast Asia. He expects digitalization to enable trillions of dollars of credit for billions of people, a significant shift in economic mobility.

  “The moment that that transaction goes into a digital ledger, that transaction happens digitally, then suddenly that taco seller can take that information to a bank and says, Hey, look at my cash flow, give me access to credit.”at 27:46

Venture capital & startups

• David Vélez · Nubank

  New fintech startups will struggle to build consumer brands with hundreds of millions of customers.

  He argues that early-stage fintechs have a harder path than scaled neobanks, which combine AI transformation with scale, data, brand and licenses. Early entrants are more likely to find openings in less obvious areas, such as applications built on top of AI models. Building a consumer brand with hundreds of millions of customers is difficult unless a company finds something fundamentally different. He says a major investor in Nubank is backing scaled neobanks rather than pure fintech startups.

  “so for the early entrant, I think it's going to be in areas that are potentially less obvious as an entry path... But I think building a consumer brand with hundreds of millions of customers at this stage, unless you come up with something completely fundamentally different, is be harder.”at 33:08

AI & jobs

• David Vélez · Nubank

  Remote individual knowledge work will lose to AI, so in-person collaboration becomes more valuable.

  Vélez argues that the work AI can do is roughly the work that people at home could do alone. Remote individuals will therefore compete with AI and lose. Work that depends on collaboration and coordination in person is what humans still do well. Nubank moved from fully remote to hybrid and now spends much more time in the office, which he cites as evidence. He calls this counterintuitive given where the company was five years earlier.

  “the work that AI can do is more or less the work that people at home individually could do. And so the individual at home will be competing with AIs and will lose that battle.”at 44:37