Primitive Launches System to Help Financial Institutions Deploy AI Agents

Primitive announced its launch Tuesday (April 14), saying it offers an artificial intelligence agent operating system purpose-built for regulated financial institutions.

The company’s end-to-end system for creating, deploying and governing agentic execution provides the control, third-party integration and measurement required to run AI agents across operations, Primitive said in a press release emailed to PYMNTS.

Primitive is founded by banking and FinTech executive Derek White, is supported by seed funding from Fin Capital and Pelion Venture Partners, and is part of startup programs that include Nvidia Inception, Microsoft for Startups and Google for Startups, according to the release.

White said in the release that Primitive aims to help banks meet the challenge of knowing that AI is the future but also knowing they can’t take a risk on unproven systems.

“The challenge isn’t access to AI — it’s integrating, governing and proving the return on it at enterprise scale,” White said. “Having lived this problem from inside some of the world’s largest financial institutions, we built Primitive to give leaders the control and clarity required to move AI from a pilot to a core business driver where agents execute and people lead.”

Primitive also announced Tuesday that it formed a strategic partnership with MX Technologies, which provides data and software solutions for 1,700 financial institutions, to develop an AI-native Growth Agent designed to help banks and credit unions build on the current MX offerings.

“By partnering with Primitive, we are creating a new standard for accountable AI that turns data into a catalyst for growth,” MX Founder and CEO Ryan Caldwell said in the release. “This allows financial institutions to move beyond simply observing data to deploying intelligent agents that execute on that data within rigorous, bank-grade guardrails.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Agentic AI Breaks Out of the Sandbox” found that banking, retail and tech leaders are deploying AI agents.

Across industries, more than 80% of executives are interested in AI agent adoption for a common set of high-leverage functions: customer insight, product life cycle management and strategic analytics, according to the report.

The report found that corporate leaders see AI agents as a system that reasons across departments, coordinates workflow and takes action.