U.S. Bank clients and team members expect the bank to continually innovate, a challenge the bank welcomes. 

One of the ways it meets that challenge is through the Innovation team’s annual Future Safari^TM to CES, where the team gathers insights about how emerging technologies may impact consumer expectations and what the future of financial services could look like.  

Formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, CES is the largest annual consumer technology event where global companies unveil their newest innovations and tech breakthroughs. With more than 4,100 exhibitors across dozens of industries, CES helps the bank stay on the leading edge of innovation and where tech is heading – allowing the bank to anticipate what clients will need and expect tomorrow, next year and a decade from now.  

Future Safaris – a term pioneered and trademarked by the bank – refer to events and shows that help the bank explore and pre-experience many potential futures to understand where innovation efforts should be focused. By collecting observations and signals across many trends and spaces at one time, the bank is able to identify new things that might be possible for the company, customers and employees. And CES is one of the best places to do this.  

Led by chief inovation officer Don Relyea and head of R&D Todder Moning, this year’s cohort included innovation leaders specializing in payments, intellectual property and risk. The team explored advancements that could shape the future of not only consumer technology, but also where it intersects with banking, payments and agentic commerce. 

“As customer interactions continue to become increasingly digital and increasingly enabled by AI – in all aspects of their lives – our dedication to continuous innovation enables us to meet these growing expectations,” Relyea said. “Everything we do is focused on creating the best experience for our customers.” 

Standout innovation themes
While there were intriguing innovations across every category in every industry, the top themes that stood out to the team were AI in everything, advanced health and wellness tech, and the emergence and proliferation of robots, both humanoid and non-humanoid, Moning said.  

Artificial intelligence is no longer a standalone category – it’s being woven into devices large and small, at the edge (on-device) and in the cloud, turning ordinary products into smart, context-aware companions, he said. And it’s no longer the shiny new defining feature but more in the background powering a device’s capabilities, as AI is quickly becoming a consumer expectation. Think rings, pens, eyeglasses, robots, appliances, credit cards and other form factors – they all had embedded AI this year.  

“The potential financial services implication of this continued advancement is hyper personalization as sensors and AI assistants are able to understand context, behavior and spending patterns,” Moning said. “This could dramatically improve the user experience in the future.” 

Digital wellness tech that uses sensors to analyze and predict health markers had a strong showing this year with smarter biofeedback devices, Moning said. One example is a smart mirror that scans a person's face and provides dozens of biomarkers on heart, brain, emotional and cardiac health.  

There were also wearables and other AI-based innovations that monitor numerous metrics to inform you about health risks or concerns, he said. An individual’s physical health and longevity have ties to their financial health, and these innovations can help lead to better financial planning and management.  

“Money is emotional and has biological implications,” Moning said. “Healthcare is wealth care and really matters to financial planning and outcomes, such as your longevity in retirement and how to make sure you won’t run out money.” 

The resurgence of robotics was the most visible trend this year, he said. The team saw many examples of embodied or physical AI, and far more robotics than in prior years – and as the two domains merge more deeply, a wave of AI-enabled, more general purpose and often more human-like robotic solutions are emerging. 

Robots, humanoid, non-humanoid and robotic exoskeletons that you wear are graduating from controlled environments to unstructured, real-world contexts – folding laundry, navigating homes, manufacturing, hospitals, even autonomous drones and vehicles, he said. 

Future implications 
As the bank looks to the future with technology advancing more rapidly than ever, innovations are shifting from a device that does one singular thing to system-wide integration, Moning said. AI, robotics and immersive interfaces are converging – making things not only “smart” but also connecting behaviors, identities and environments to ultimately provide personalization on a scale not seen before.  

With technology as a constant in the background of our lives, U.S. Bank will be prepared – now and in the future – to meet our clients’ needs in the way that works best for them, he said.