It hit me this morning: It’s only been two years since ChatGPT launched, and somehow half of corporate finance now runs on AI… or pretends to.

AI funding is now $1.2 trillion. 42% of companies are spending 10%+ of their capex on AI tools. And 84% of finance leaders say they’re “optimistic” about AI’s potential.

Optimistic is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Gartner warned early on that AI wouldn’t just make processes faster, it would rearrange priorities, change who gets funded internally, and force CFOs to relearn their own playbooks.

Here’s where I’m stuck:

Are we actually transforming the finance function… or just duct-taping AI onto 20-year-old workflows and calling it innovation?

CFOs, from where you sit, what’s actually changing inside companies right now?

Y Combinator is basically betting the house on agentic AI.

Last year, 73% of funded startups were “agentic”. AI that doesn’t just answer tasks, but acts.

Meanwhile… most CFOs admit they have no idea how to evaluate these tools.

Spatial computing is projected to grow 15x by 2033. Agentic AI is exploding.

CFO roles are getting more complex, tech is outpacing governance, and nobody’s pausing long enough to ask the obvious question:

Are we building systems that make decisions… without people who understand how those decisions are made?

I’m genuinely curious: Where’s the line between empowering teams and giving AI too much autonomy?

Cloud-native finance. AI-driven decisions. Continuous planning. Autonomous workflows. Real-time risk scoring. Data mesh finance. And something called “predictive compliance.”

These are the seven “game-changing” tech trends being pushed on CFOs heading into 2026.

All useful in theory.

All buzzwords in the wild.

Here’s the real debate:

Which of these trends matter, and which ones are just vendor PowerPoint slides in disguise?

If you could only pick one tech upgrade for 2026; what’s the one that would actually move your P&L?

256 new CFOs. 215 exits. And that’s just Q1–Q3 of 2025.

According to Russell Reynolds, CFO turnover is still climbing, and the reasons are shifting.

It’s no longer the IPO wave from 2021. It’s not “chasing bigger titles.” It’s deeper stuff: Burnout. Boards demanding transformation overnight. CFO roles expanding faster than teams can keep up. And CEOs expecting CFOs to be half-strategist, half-therapist.

Which makes me wonder:

Is CFO turnover a talent problem… or is the modern CFO role simply becoming unsustainable?

If you’ve switched companies recently. what pushed you?

Rates are still high. Inflation is still sticky. Uncertainty is still uncertainty-ing.

And somehow consumers are planning to spend 7% more on holiday shopping than they projected in June, according to Business Insider.

Either people are financially delusional… or they’re numb.

For CFOs, this raises a deeper question:

Is this a real demand signal, or the last gasp before consumer credit taps out in 2026?

I want to hear from the people running consumer-facing businesses: Are you seeing real spending… or real softness under the hood?

Climate is now officially a financial problem, not a philanthropic one.

NYC’s Comptroller Brad Lander made it blunt: “Climate risk is financial risk.”

Not politics. Not ESG theater. A risk line item.

This raises the obvious CFO question: How exactly are companies supposed to price climate into financial planning?

Is this a real cost-driver CFOs should start modeling… or a slogan that will take years to translate into actual financial policy?

Genuinely curious how you’re handling this internally.

WSJ reports Robinhood is growing again thanks to retail traders with a renewed appetite for risk.

Back in 2020, people blamed lockdown boredom. In 2021, they blamed stimulus checks. Now there’s no excuse left… and risk behavior is rising anyway.

So here’s the question:

Are retail investors seeing something institutions don’t… or is this just the return of pure gambling disguised as “confidence”?

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Ciao!