The only newsletter a CFO actually has time to read.

Today’s edition: AI changing accounting, third-party cyber chaos, and the emerging “AI debt bubble” CFOs quietly fear.

---

Everyone keeps saying AI is replacing junior accountants.

RSM US LLP (one of the biggest hiring machines in public accounting) says the opposite.

They hire 3,000 to 4,000 new grads a year.

Their take: AI-native juniors are more valuable, not less.

RSM’s toolkit now includes:

• RSM Atlas: maps controls to regulations in minutes instead of months

• AI for R&D credits: auto-generates tax positions

• Blue J: searches tax law and rulings faster than a senior tax manager hopped up on Red Bull

The pitch is simple:

AI cuts the manual sludge so accountants can get to judgment faster.

But here’s the real question:

If AI kills the grunt work, how do we train the next generation of accountants who used to learn by doing that grunt work?

Does the career ladder still make sense?

Jaguar Land Rover got hit with a cyberattack.

They paused production.

And more than 5,000 suppliers (many tiny, fragile vendors) felt the blast radius.

Estimated damage: £1.9 billion.

Mario Paez from Marsh McLennan put it plainly:

Companies are so interconnected that one outage is now everyone’s outage.

Translation for CFOs:

Your biggest cyber threat might not be your system…

It might be the random Tier-3 vendor running Windows 7 in a basement.

So here’s the debate:

Should CFOs start treating third-party risk like a financial covenant, with real consequences when vendors fail to meet standards?

Or is that unrealistic for SMB supply chains?

AI hype is at its peak.

But according to Egnyte’s CEO, companies are racking up tech debt trying to bolt AI onto systems that weren’t built for it.

And mid-size companies?

They’re apparently the worst offenders, building “cool AI pilots” in ways that are borderline reckless.

OpenAI, investors, vendors, all saying “move fast.”

CFOs are staring at bills and asking, “Wait… when does the return show up?”

Here’s the part that’s not being discussed:

Are we in a mini AI bubble where organizational FOMO is forcing CFOs to overspend on tech that won’t pay off for years?

Or is this the cost of getting a strategic edge before competitors do?

Where do you stand?

5.5M square feet:

Net retail expansion in Q3.

Yes, brick-and-mortar is quietly having a moment.

“Rather than thinking about it as a job replacement tool, how do you reduce someone’s workload by 50 percent?”

— Lowe’s CEO on AI

Is this optimism… or PR spin?

Which of today’s stories should we dig deeper into tomorrow?

Drop your take.

CFOs solving real problems are the ones who make this newsletter smarter.

More CFOs are leaving corporate than ever, but very few have a plan.

These two guides were written to fix that.

Inside: how to niche, market, price, and get your first clients without wasting months.

If you're serious about going fractional this year, start with these.