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Washington State’s Kitsap Credit Union was the first to take make an equity investment in a private company under a new state law for state-chartered credit unions.
Kitsap ($2.3 billion in assets, 160,589 members) said its minority investment provides a design partnership with D8TAOPS, Inc., an enterprise-ready AI and data orchestration company based in Beaverton, Ore. D8TAOPS has developed a proprietary platform that transforms legacy data workflows into governed, agentic AI systems designed for real-time enterprise use.
Kitsap President/CEO Shawn Gilfedder wouldn’t tell CU Times Tuesday how much it invested except that it was under the law’s threshold of 5% of the credit union’s net worth, which would have created a $10.1 million ceiling as of its June 30 Call Report.
In addition to the investment, Kitsap pays fees to D8TAOPS.
Gilfedder said the goal of the investment was to build a strong foundation with agentic technology. “Working with D8TAOPS has really provided us that opportunity, and that is making sure that we have the right infrastructure architecture.”
“We set up our own private language model inside of our Azure cloud, and that allows us to not only access our data in a different way, but also brings us a level of efficiency,” he said.
Kitsap and D8TAOPS launched a pilot project in March to apply agentic AI to its loan audits that check for regulatory compliance and underwriting issues. By the end of May it had a product to show the board.
In the past, the audits consumed about 24 personnel hours to process a 3% sample of its loan portfolio.
“Now we can do 100% of the portfolio in near real time. And we’re talking about seconds per processing event,” Gilfedder said. “It’s not to say that what was done in the past was wrong, it’s we’re finding ways to be much more effective, not just efficient.”
After employees get comfortable using agentic AI for internal processes such as analytics, reporting, compliance, fraud and risk management, then they will start developing uses for members and others.
For example, the credit union might be able to help a member who was considering starting a business.
“Agentic technology would allow us to have a deeper discussion relative to what those opportunities look like, how you may want to finance that opportunity,” he said.
The technology can go through the member’s savings account, savings habits and personal cash flow patterns within seconds.
While Kitsap pays a fee for the AI services, Gilfedder said making an investment in the company gives the credit union more control over how the company develops the technology.
“We have a seat at the table and I think that’s important,” he said. “It’s a rare opportunity that you get to step towards something like that in the business world.”
The credit union will measure the success of the investment by improvements in efficiencies and effectiveness.
Contact Jim DuPlessis at JDuPlessis@cutimes.com.
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