# AI is shrinking Revolut's teams and speeding up work

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-is-shrinking-revoluts-teams-and-speeding-up-work/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Nik Storonsky](https://realalpha.app/people/nik-storonsky/) · Nik Storonsky is cofounder and CEO of Revolut. · Co-founded Revolut, the digital bank valued at $115 billion, and founded the QuantumLight venture fund.
- Host: [David Senra](https://realalpha.app/people/david-senra/) · Host, Founders · Has read an entrepreneur's biography every week for Founders since 2016.
- Show: Founders
- Episode: [Competition, Intensity & Building a $115 Billion Global Bank | Nik Storonsky, Revolut](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/), Oct 25, 2026
- Moment: 23:38 to 27:54 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-is-shrinking-revoluts-teams-and-speeding-up-work/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1418

## Quote

> “So we automated customer support, so **90% of all customer support** team is automated now.”
> — [Nik Storonsky](https://realalpha.app/people/nik-storonsky/) at [24:15](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1455) · Founders

## Takeaways

1. Customer support automation replaced much of a 5,000-plus-person team.
2. Engineering speed increased by 30%.
3. LLMs help designers create live interfaces three to four times faster.

## About this segment

Nik Storonsky says 90% of customer support is automated and engineering speed rose 30%; he expects teams to shrink to two or three people. He also describes spreading an LLM-based design workflow across Revolut.

From “Competition, Intensity & Building a $115 Billion Global Bank | Nik Storonsky, Revolut”, Oct 25, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[23:43](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1423) I think I optimized a lot how you direct people, how you build organization around people, around their strengths and weaknesses, like avoiding politics, putting KPIs and so on. That's actually avoiding people's weaknesses, right, with AI. Instruction needs to be a result, to be honest with you. I think the team, we should not be 10 people anymore. It should be two people, three people at best, because one developer can do front-end, back-end, can even do data science as well.

[24:11](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1451) So it should be a result. Can you give me a download of your thoughts about how AI is changing the way that you're running your company? Well, many things, and I think we're just in the beginning. So we automated customer support, so 90% of all customer support team is automated now. We're doing the same. Before it used to be 5,000 people plus, now it's much less. Obviously, engineering is automated as well.

[24:34](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1474) We increased speed of engineers by 30%. Translation, cross-selling as well done by LLMs now, a lot of things. But I think the ultimate goal is, or at least a bet for us now, is to be able to build a full-stack AI employee. I think it's completely doable with current technology. Not like a chat tool or another interface where you tell what to do and then it produces something. No, it's more like AI employee, which can join calls with you, which have email, which have Slack account, which have access to all internal back office system and can do work.

[25:16](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1516) So I think that's kind of the ultimate goal. I mean, sooner or later, a majority of companies will come to. Yeah, you keep mentioning over and over again, like, I don't know if you use the word bureaucracy. I don't think you did, but you hate politics. You want to minimize that. you want like data you're much more like just i don't care what you say it's like did we hit the numbers or not and is this growing or not what's your organizational structure you just have a shitload of direct reports like alexander wang was sitting in that chair like two weeks ago and he had some crazy shit like 200 direct reports yeah so like what's your how are you organized uh so i have about 50 51 52 um reality i'm not even speak well i speak with my dark reports but I always go deeper. I go down to individual

[25:59](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1559) contributor in important projects so I can speak directly with designer, with product owner, with developer. Philosophy is very simple. Whenever you hire smart, self-guided people, you don't really need to manage them. You just need to show them direction and then ensure that they're all synchronized. It's like an army. You need to ensure that all people are using the same standardized equipment. That's what you need in the company as well. You do not need every single team or department to reinvent their own bicycles or their own weapons. Now, it has to be the same standard approach. And then if someone invents some additional kind of tool or additional instrument, which allows us to move even faster, then we need to standardize it across all the teams and departments. And that's what I do very

[26:49](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1609) well. I'm very good at supporting our innovation in one team or one department and then actually spreading it across the whole company. Can you give me an example of you spotting an innovation and spreading it through the other departments? For example, recently it was for design we always used Figma. Right now I supported that one team is actually producing designs much faster using LLMs and then instead of actually designing in a certain interface they simply uploaded our design system on the code level to LLM and then they prompt to produce certain flows based on our design system. As a result, the whole design And it's not really a frame in Figma, but it's like a live interface on your laptop or on your simulator.

[27:36](https://realalpha.app/v/hT_MAAwFLIc/?t=1656) So you can click through things, it reacts and so on. But the most important thing, you can do it three, four times faster compared to doing frames in Figma or screens in Figma. And then I'm pushing the whole system to all designers now.