AI Starts Delivering Real Returns: Santander to Novartis Prove It in Financial Reports

After years of being touted as the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is finally starting to show tangible form in the financial reports of several global companies. The third-quarter 2026 earnings season bears witness to how banking and pharmaceutical giants are no longer merely paying lip service to AI, but are instead citing concrete figures that contribute to revenue and profit.

Spanish bank Santander is among the most explicit. In its report for the first nine months of 2026, it claims AI initiatives have generated business value of 194 million euro, or about 216 million US dollars. This figure is not a projection but a result already felt on both the revenue and cost lines. Santander Chief Financial Officer José García Cantera told CNBC that AI is now embedded in various banking processes, from the simplest to the most complex. "The impact is felt in revenue and costs, so we are really in the quarter where we can connect the direct positive contribution of AI," he said, as quoted in an exclusive interview.

It is not just Santander. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis has experienced something similar. CEO Vas Narasimhan said the third quarter of 2026 was the first moment when AI genuinely improved the company's profit in a measurable way. Novartis booked core operating profit of 6.04 billion US dollars, up 10% year-on-year at constant currency. Although he did not detail what percentage AI contributed, Narasimhan stressed that the technology has improved research and development productivity as well as sales and marketing functions. "I think this is the first quarter where I really see AI starting to improve our P&L in a real way," he said on the Squawk Box Europe program.

In the UK banking sector, Standard Chartered also reported operating income growth of 14% at constant currency. Its CFO, Andy Halford, said part of that growth came from deploying AI tools that improved core processes and enabled more efficient business scale. "We see strong operating leverage, where revenue grows much faster than costs, and partly because we can deploy AI tools to improve core processes," he explained. Meanwhile, Carlsberg has yet to see large-scale AI benefits, although CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen acknowledged the technology has affected internal processes, cost efficiency, and the supply chain.

The surge in AI investment is itself driven by expectations of efficiency and profitability. The Stanford HAI 2026 report noted that corporate spending on AI in 2025 reached 581.7 billion US dollars, up 130% from the previous year. Hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are expected to spend a total of 700 billion US dollars this year on AI infrastructure. Investors are also becoming more discerning, demanding real evidence rather than mere promises. This pressure is what pushes companies like Santander and Novartis to try to quantify AI's impact, even though it remains difficult to separate AI's contribution from other factors.

On the technology side, Meta reported that its AI investments generated "substantial additional advertising revenue," with total revenue surging 26% in the quarter ended 30 September. Meanwhile, Alphabet, even though Google Search revenue growth slowed due to concerns about AI competition, actually recorded Google Cloud revenue that more than doubled to nearly 31 billion US dollars. This shows that AI not only cuts costs but also opens new revenue sources.

For Indonesia, this development is both a mirror and a warning. Domestic companies, especially in the banking and manufacturing sectors, need to start measuring the impact of their AI investments in real terms. Without clear metrics, AI adoption risks stalling at the pilot stage without financial results. The government is also urged to prepare a regulatory framework and incentives that encourage productive AI adoption, not mere ceremony. With the massive wave of global investment, Indonesia has an opportunity to catch up if it can push local companies to move from experimentation to measurable implementation.

Going forward, the question is no longer whether AI delivers returns, but how quickly companies can turn large investments into sustainable competitive advantage. Investors will continue to demand transparency, and companies that fail to show concrete results risk losing market trust. The next earnings season will be the real test for AI claims that have so far been little more than rhetoric.