Salt Lake City, Utah, April 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Primitive launches today as the AI agent operating system purpose-built for regulated financial institutions — offering an end-to-end system for creating, deploying, and governing agentic execution. The company is founded by banking and fintech executive Derek White.
Primitive enables banks to move beyond fragmented AI pilots into governed, production-scale deployment — providing the control, third-party integration, and measurement required to run AI agents optimally across operations.
Primitive introduces Agent Capital — a new form of enterprise capital — and Return on Agent Capital (ROAC) as the framework for quantifying AI’s value. As AI agents take on execution, institutions can now measure and monitor that performance with the same discipline as financial and human capital.
This shift isn’t just technological — it’s organizational. To realize return on agent capital, human workflows must evolve alongside autonomous systems. Primitive delivers that alignment, amplifying impact as both scale together.
“The bank executives who have helped us shape Primitive all face a common, critical challenge: they know AI is the future, but they cannot risk the reputation or stability of their institution on unproven systems,” said Derek White, CEO and Founder of Primitive. “The challenge isn’t access to AI — it’s integrating, governing, and proving the return on it at enterprise scale. Having lived this problem from inside some of the world’s largest financial institutions, we built Primitive to give leaders the control and clarity required to move AI from a pilot to a core business driver where agents execute and people lead.”
In conjunction with its launch, Primitive is today also announcing a strategic partnership with MX Technologies, Inc. (MX), a leading data and software solution provider for over 1,700 financial institutions. As part of this partnership, the companies are developing an AI-native Growth Agent designed to help banks and credit unions build on the current MX offerings to identify deposit opportunities in real-time, execute personalized campaigns, and streamline workflows like direct deposit switching.
“The future of banking is moving from passive insights to proactive, autonomous action, and that transition requires absolute trust,” said Ryan Caldwell, founder and CEO of MX. “By partnering with Primitive, we are creating a new standard for accountable AI that turns data into a catalyst for growth. This allows financial institutions to move beyond simply observing data to deploying intelligent agents that execute on that data within rigorous, bank-grade guardrails. It isn't just about efficiency; it’s about giving banks and credit unions the power to leverage enriched data as a strategic asset, fundamentally automate complex workflows, and scale their impact without compromising on safety, transparency, or trust.”
The Primitive platform comprises three components:
- The Engine Room, which connects AI agents — including third parties — directly to enterprise systems without replacing them.
- The Assembler, which builds from a use case to a production-ready agent in 90 days.
- The Control Tower, which delivers governance through logging, tracing, and independently validating that every agent action is compliant, as well as measuring performance.
The business is launching with a set of pre-built agent templates across commercial lending, human-in-the-loop operations, risk and compliance, deep research, and regulatory oversight. These provide institutions with immediate starting points for AI agent deployments, tailored to their environment with built-in guardrails.
“AI in banking can’t be a black box — it has to be controllable, observable, and auditable by design,” said Arun Shanmugavelu, Primitive CTO. “At Primitive, governance isn’t a layer you add later — it is the system. By bringing together control, creativity, and proof into a single system, we ensure every agent is not only powerful, but fully governed — where every decision is traceable, every action is controlled, and every outcome is provable.”
Primitive is supported by seed funding from Fin Capital and Pelion Venture Partners, and is part of leading global startup programs including NVIDIA Inception, Microsoft for Startups, and Google for Startups.
“Primitive is the B2B FinTech infrastructure layer the banking industry needs to cross the chasm to AI adoption and hire and deploy agents in a secure and scaled approach across an infinite set of use cases. Bank executives fundamentally understand the potential power of AI, now it is time to harness it and Primitive will lead the way,” said Logan Allin, Founder and Managing Partner at Fin Capital.
“The combination of deep operator experience and a clear view of the governance gap positions Primitive to define this next phase of banking technology,” said Tyler Hogge, Managing Director at Pelion Venture Partners.
The Primitive Design Partner Program is open to a limited number of regulated financial institutions moving from AI experimentation to AI production. Applications are available at primitive.com.
About Primitive
Primitive is the agentic AI platform for regulated financial institutions, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The platform enables institutions to create, integrate, deploy, govern and measure the performance of AI agents across enterprise operations, securely within their own data environments.
About MX
MX Technologies, Inc. is a leader in turning data into growth, enabling financial providers and consumers to do more with financial data. MX provides end-to-end solutions for financial institutions and fintechs to connect to, understand, and act on customers’ financial data.
Chris Semple Primitive chris@primitive.com Madison Wilson MX madison.wilson@mx.com