Barclays announces collaboration with ExpectAI

Barclays today announced it is collaborating with ExpectAI, a pioneering technology company that uses AI with the aim of helping small and medium-sized businesses grow their profits, using sustainability insights.

At Barclays, we are harnessing artificial intelligence to drive efficiency, create capacity and fuel innovation, helping our people to become more productive and improving client service.

SMEs generate about half of UK private-sector turnover and employ around 60% of the workforce. Strengthening their energy resilience while reducing emissions is essential to the UK’s economic transition. This initiative will assess how advanced AI can make this both practical and commercially attractive for SMEs¹.

From early 2026, using publicly available information, Barclays will test ExpectAI’s Una platform. This AI-driven platform creates digital twins of SME operations to deliver clear, actionable insights. Una aims to provide businesses with an adaptive carbon profile, tailored energy-efficiency recommendations, and connections to verified solution providers and funding partners to accelerate implementation.

The testing will assess the potential of the platform to create value for UK-based businesses, including how AI-powered insights could translate sustainability opportunities into measurable improvements in productivity, cost efficiency and competitiveness.

Daniel Hanna, Group Head of Sustainable and Transition Finance, Barclays, said: “Barclays believes that AI platforms will play an important role in supporting businesses with sustainability-related initiatives and decision-making. Our ambition with this initiative is to support the development of an emerging climate tech business and help our clients understand the connection between sustainability and business value creation.”

Anand Verma, Founder and CEO, ExpectAI, added: “We are delighted to be working with Barclays on this important initiative. ExpectAI was founded to help SMEs become more profitable, productive and sustainable. Barclays’ long-standing focus on SMEs and their commitment to supporting clients through the transition make them the ideal organisation to advance this work. We look forward to demonstrating how this could create real value for UK-based businesses.”

This collaboration with ExpectAI demonstrates how we plan to deliver our climate ambition, as outlined in Barclays Transition Update, delivering our strategy by working with clients on their transition, financing the transition and scaling climate technology.

ENDS

Notes

¹ https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/small-business-survey-2023-businesses-with-employees/longitudinal-small-business-survey-sme-employers-businesses-with-1-to-249-employees-uk-2023; https://accountancyage.com/2025/06/09/cash-flow-pressures-climb-as-57-of-uk-smes-warn-of-rising-costs/; https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/impact-of-higher-energy-costs-on-uk-businesses

About Barclays
Barclays is a British universal bank. We are diversified by business, by different types of customers and clients, and by geography. Our businesses include consumer banking and payments operations around the world, as well as a top-tier, full service, global corporate and investment bank, all of which are supported by our service company which provides technology, operations and functional services across the Group.

About ExpectAI
ExpectAI is a UK-based artificial intelligence company founded to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve higher profits and lower emissions. Its AI platform builds digital twins of businesses to generate precise operational insights that reduce costs, improve performance and accelerate profitable decarbonisation. The company’s flagship product, the Una platform, provides SMEs with adaptive carbon profiles, tailored energy-efficiency recommendations and connections to verified solution providers and finance partners to accelerate delivery. ExpectAI’s vision is to enable SME Superintelligence—giving every business the context, insights and actions needed to thrive in a more sustainable economy.
www.expectai.com