BNY Mellon CFO: AI token costs 'modest within modest' as bank spends $3.8B on tech, expands Bitcoin and Ether custody for institutions.
Alpha Score of 66 reflects moderate overall profile with strong momentum, weak value, moderate quality, strong sentiment.
BNY Mellon’s CFO Dermot McDonogh told Fortune the bank does not track how many AI prompts employees generate. He called token costs “modest within modest” relative to the bank’s overall engineering budget. Some big tech companies turned token consumption into a status symbol, with engineers encouraged to climb usage leaderboards, Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn reported. McDonogh said that framing “never took hold” inside BNY. The firm cares about what the technology produces for the business, not how many tokens it burns.
The bank spent $3.8 billion on technology in 2025, equal to 19% of total revenue. Workforce reductions have occurred alongside the spending. McDonogh said the bank is focused on revenue growth and raising per-employee performance.
BNY Mellon launched its U.S. digital asset custody platform in October 2022, supporting Bitcoin and Ether for institutional clients. The move made it one of the first major U.S. custodian banks to hold crypto directly. In April 2025, the bank plans to introduce its Digital Asset Data Insights platform. BlackRock’s tokenized fund has signed on as the first client. The custodian layer is the most critical piece of institutional crypto adoption. Sovereign wealth funds and large asset managers need regulated custody from counterparties their compliance teams already trust. They do not buy Bitcoin through retail exchanges.
BNY also intends to roll out Bitcoin and Ether custody in the UAE in 2026 through strategic partnerships. Tokenized funds – traditional assets like Treasuries or money market funds represented on-chain – have been one of the fastest-growing segments of institutional crypto activity. BNY providing the data infrastructure for BlackRock’s tokenized fund puts the bank at the center of that shift.
The AlphaScala Alpha Score for BNY Mellon, listed as BK, stands at 69, indicating a moderate outlook. The bank’s technology spending and custody ambitions suggest a long-term bet on bridging traditional finance with digital assets, even if the AI token count never matters.
Drafted by a large language model from the source reporting linked above, then screened by automated publishing checks. It is not read by a journalist before publication. Some articles cite our Alpha Score. Verify prices and figures against the original source. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.