Pine Labs Invests ₹24 Cr In AI R&D In FY26, Cuts Testing Time by Over 95%

Pine Labs spent ₹24 Cr on AI and research and development initiatives in FY26, according to the company's annual report as covered by Inc42. The Indian fintech company says the investment has cut software testing cycle times by more than 95%.

Of the total spend, ₹20 Cr went toward strengthening AI capabilities, upgrading technology infrastructure, and automating customer-facing processes, per Inc42. The remaining ₹4 Cr was directed at enterprise-wide tools including model context protocol (MCP) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. Deployments during the year included email AI agents, a PineOne Chat AI Agent for customer support, an AI-powered scheme configuration tool for offer enablement, and an AI Virtual Employee platform for multi-functional agentic tasks.

Pine Labs claims the AI push has produced measurable operational results: developer productivity up 25%, initial incident analysis time down 80%, and autonomous AI agents now responsible for nearly 89% of all new code changes over the past two quarters — modifying more than 1.5 million lines of code, the company's annual report states. The company also deployed AI across its cybersecurity operations, covering false-positive analysis, zero-day threat alerts, and automated code scanning, with governance managed through a centralised "Agentic HQ" oversight layer.

Beyond internal tooling, Pine Labs launched two external-facing AI products during the period. The first, P3P, is described as an autonomous agentic payments protocol built on top of UPI, which the company characterises as "a compliance-first architecture where buyer and seller agents discover, negotiate, and complete transactions autonomously within established regulatory guardrails." The second, SignalIQ, is an automated bank statement analyser and underwriting engine that tracks UPI transactions to predict financial stress; the company claims it processed over 50,000 loan requests within weeks of launch, per Inc42.

On the financial front, Pine Labs turned profitable for the full fiscal year in FY26, reporting a consolidated net profit of ₹112.5 Cr on operating revenue of ₹2,710.6 Cr — up 19% year-over-year. In Q1 FY27, net profit jumped more than 4x year-over-year to ₹19.6 Cr, though it fell 67% quarter-on-quarter. The company's platform processed 201 crore transactions worth ₹4.2 lakh crore in gross transaction value during the June quarter, according to Inc42.

The annual report framed the AI build-out as an ambition extending beyond internal efficiency: "We are no longer focused solely on adopting AI; we are helping shape the standards, protocols and infrastructure that will underpin the next generation of AI-native commerce," Pine Labs said. The company's FY26 disclosures do not specify near-term spending targets for AI in FY27, but the dual focus on internal automation and external AI-native products suggests the investment programme is ongoing.