This Friday, I was in a room full of CFOs.
One CFO claimed:
The traditional EPM stack is ending, and AI is being introduced.
Many CFOs asked me after my keynote:
What’s my next move?
How can I start with AI?
CFOs are excited about AI on the surface.
But behind the scenes, they’re unsure.
What if I fall behind?
What if I get it wrong?
What if it replaces jobs?
But the IBM CFO in the panel explained how he is using Microsoft Co-Pilot as his AI sidekick and built a mini-CFO AI version.
Which was really fascinating to hear.
There are CFOs who are watching from the sidelines.
There are CFOs who are piloting tools.
And there are CFOs who are waiting on the sidelines for AI to get better.
But while you wait, others are moving. Fast.
After 4 hours of content and conversations with CFOs, one thing is clear…
CFOs are ready for change.
Hungry to shape what comes next.
The CFO Office is being rebuilt.
Consider today’s letter an action plan for CFOs.
At the end of this letter, you’ll look at AI in finance from a perspective you were looking for.
Let’s dive in.
AI is Changing Finance Now
Every CFO knows the back office isn’t broken because people don’t work hard.
It’s broken because too much of finance still runs on manual documents, siloed systems, and endless reconciliations.
Closing faster and translating currencies are not the CFO’s job. They’re important capabilities of the finance function, but they are not the core of your value.
Your value is influence.
Influence with the CEO on capital allocation.
Influence with the board on risk and direction.
Influence with operators on trade-offs and speed.
AI makes influence possible at scale because it reduces the cost of mechanics to near zero. If you let those freed hours evaporate into more reporting, you lose.
If you reallocate those hours into decision support and partnership, you win.
That’s where Dost comes in.
Your finance data is messy, with invoices, payments, and orders scattered across systems. Dost’s AI cleans it up: extracts, enriches, reconciles, and plugs straight into your ERP. That means payments handled, expenses categorized, compliance built-in, and reporting done.
Think of Dost as the AI layer that sits across your finance workflows. It doesn’t just collect your documents or payments, but it turns raw data into decisions.
So you stop chasing mechanics. You start making decisions.
But that’s not it; let’s look at the exponential growth of AI.
Every CFO Has 2 Choices
Imagine it’s 2035. Finance teams are gone.
No accountants. No FP&A analysts. No controllers.
Just you and 10,000 AI agents running finance in real-time.
The books close themselves instantly. Cash flow is optimized before you even ask. Forecasts adjust automatically with live market data.
No more SaaS vendors.
No more vendor negotiations.
No more procurement headaches.
FP&A vendors pivot to selling “AI-optimized strategy consulting,” but no one buys because AI handles that too. Why pay for software when your AI agents build what you need on demand?
Need a new FP&A model? Agent-4821 designs it in seconds.
Regulatory change? Agent-7734 updates compliance in real time.
Board report? AI assembles the slides before you wake up.
Finance runs itself.
No audits.
No errors.
No manual work.
This might sound too futuristic, but let’s look into why this can play out.
Look closer at the chart.
Lovable, Cursor, Wiz, OpenAI.
AI companies are scaling faster than any software company in history.
$1M to $100M ARR in record time.
I’ve seen this myself. Cursor wrote 80% of the code in our product in a year. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, says the same: AI is writing all their code.
And benchmarks confirm it.
AI is closing in on top human specialists in math and coding. Tasks once reserved for elite engineers are now being handled by models.
The most shocking part isn’t that AI can do it.
It’s how fast this is happening.
We’ve crossed the line where AI isn’t assistive anymore.
It’s agentic. It builds, fixes, reconciles, and runs.
So, back to you.
Every CFO has 2 choices:
Act like Blockbuster CFO. The new AI project is too expensive right now.
Become like Netflix CFO: Let’s find out how AI can accelerate profitability.
The future belongs to CFOs who adapt to change
So what’s the next move?
Read on.
The Traditional CFO Tech Stack Is Broken
Core systems (ERP, CRM, billing) feed into integration layers (data warehousing, ETL tools).
Output layers (FP&A tools, dashboards) require manual intervention.
Agentic AI replaces this with a centralized “finance data warehouse” where autonomous agents handle processes like accounts payable/receivable, treasury management, and compliance.
Traditional Stack: Layered architecture requiring human intervention.
Agentic Stack: A unified system with autonomous agents managing end-to-end processes.
Only a small fraction of CFOs feel their teams are truly prepared to leverage AI.
That’s fine, but AI is now everyone’s problem, and you must catch up.
The CFO must stop working like a chief accounting officer.
Which brings me to one of the most exciting new players: Pluto.
Pluto issues smart corporate cards with built-in controls.
Every transaction is tracked in real time, receipts are auto-captured and coded, and reconciliation happens automatically.
It plugs into your ERP, enforces policy, and gives you instant visibility into spend without the manual cleanup.
These are the tools CFOs must take a closer look into.
But AI can’t be plugged in overnight.
It needs a plan. Let me share it with you.
3 Ways To Integrate AI in Finance
1. Fix What’s Broken First
Before AI can transform finance, CFOs must modernize their core financial systems. AI amplifies efficiency, but it can’t fix data silos, outdated processes, or broken workflows on its own.
Without a solid foundation, AI projects will fail.
Start With the Basics
Many finance teams still rely on legacy ERPs, scattered Excel models, and disconnected systems. This leads to:
Slow, manual financial close? AI can cut processing time in half.
Outdated forecasts? AI adjusts predictions instantly based on live data.
Compliance risks? AI spots anomalies before they become fraud.
AI can’t function without structured, real-time data. Before implementing AI, CFOs must:
Break down data silos. Unify financial data across ERPs, FP&A, and reporting systems.
Invest in a modern finance tech stack. Move beyond legacy systems to cloud-based platforms.
Automate core financial processes. Standardize workflows to reduce errors and improve speed.
CFOs who invest in fixing the fundamentals will see faster, more reliable AI adoption without wasted investments in tools that can’t function in a broken system.
The Pareto Rule applies here; 80% of inefficiencies come from 20% of finance processes.
2. Get CEO and IT Buy-In
AI won’t sell itself.
CFOs must build a clear business case that proves AI’s financial impact.
Without measurable ROI, AI initiatives won’t get leadership support, and without IT integration, they won’t scale.
High-ROI AI Use Cases That Get CEO Approval
CFOs who successfully get AI buy-in focus on profit-driving, efficiency-boosting use cases, such as:
Real-Time Forecasting
Traditional forecasting is lagging and manual. AI models adjust in real time using market conditions, sales trends, and operational data.
Example: Team Car Care (Jiffy Lube franchisee) uses AI to predict customer traffic, optimizing staffing and inventory, cutting waste, and lost revenue.
AI-Powered Risk Simulations
AI runs real-time scenario modeling to predict financial risks and their impact.
Example: Mastercard uses AI-driven risk models to predict credit risk, optimizing fraud detection and compliance monitoring.
Automating Financial Close
AI speeds up month-end close by matching transactions, flagging anomalies, and reconciling accounts.
Example: BlackLine cut close cycles by 50% using AI-powered anomaly detection.
These aren’t experimental AI projects.
They drive tangible ROI, making the case for broader AI adoption.
3. Lead with Data
AI is only as good as the data it’s fed.
If finance data is messy, outdated, or siloed, AI won’t work. CFOs must clean up their data foundation first, no shortcuts.
Why Finance Data Needs Fixing
Disconnected Systems: ERP, FP&A, and reporting tools often don’t talk to each other, leading to data fragmentation.
Inconsistent Formats: Different teams use different data structures, creating errors and delays.
Poor Data Governance: Lack of controls leads to compliance risks and unreliable AI outputs.
Bad data = bad AI decisions.
How CFOs Can Fix Finance Data
Remove Data Silos
Break down barriers between ERP, FP&A, and reporting.
Create a single source of truth for finance data.
Invest in a Finance Data Lake
Centralize structured & unstructured data so AI can process it.
Store historical financials, transaction records, and operational data in one place.
Example: Companies using data lakes with AI-powered analytics see 30-50% faster reporting cycles.
Stay on Top of Data Governance & Compliance
Define clear data ownership across finance, IT, and compliance.
Automate data validation & anomaly detection to improve accuracy.
AI models trained on inaccurate or biased data will deliver wrong insights. A compliance risk CFOs can’t afford.
Standardize Finance Data Formats
Align data across systems (e.g., same definitions for revenue, costs, and KPIs).
Use AI-powered data mapping to fix inconsistencies.
Integrate Real-Time Data Feeds
AI needs access to live financial data to provide accurate forecasts and decision support.
Remove manual uploads & batch processing. Enable real-time data syncing.
Don’t treat AI like a magic button.
Treat AI as a journey.
The Bottom Line
64% of the CFOs believes autonomous finannce Will happen by 2028 (Gartner)
You have to act now. You have to be in the room with CFOs to catch up.
AI needs experimentation: Rapid iteration and cross-functional collaboration. All of which go against traditional finance habits.
AI is misunderstood: Finance fears job loss instead of seeing AI as a tool to improve their work.
AI without human expertise is dangerous: AI can’t replace human judgment in critical financial decisions. You must learn how to work with AI, not against it.
I’m leaving Dubai and flying back home tonight.
We had an amazing AI CFO Office Event.
The next in-person event will happen in NewYork.
And that’s all for today.
See you on Thursday!
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
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I’m Wouter Born. A CFOTech investor, advisor, and founder of finstory.ai
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