The Modern CFO Agenda: AI, Growth and Smarter Decision-Making

If you’d asked this question a couple of years ago, the answer would probably have been fundraising, runway and extending cash. Those conversations haven’t disappeared, but they’ve evolved.

Today, finance leaders are balancing something much more complicated. They still have to manage cash, support growth and prepare for the next funding round, but they’re also trying to work out how AI fits into the business without creating more problems than it solves.

We recently sat down with Alex Laurent, Managing Director at TalentEdge, to discuss the commercial decisions CFOs are prioritising over the next 12 months. While AI dominated much of the conversation, what emerged a discussion about judgement, commercial discipline and making better decisions.

While AI is everywhere, strategy isn’t.

It’s difficult to have a conversation with any finance leader today without AI entering the discussion.

Whether it’s board meetings, hiring plans or finance transformation projects, every business seems to be asking the same question.

“What should we actually be doing with AI?”

The reality is that very few organisations have a definitive answer.

Some businesses are exploring agentic workflows and others are experimenting with copilots or building internal tools. Many are simply trying to understand where AI genuinely creates value.

The mistake is assuming every finance function needs a complete overhaul while in reality, most don’t.

Instead, the biggest opportunities usually come from solving small, repetitive problems first. Reconciliations. Reporting workflows. Data collection. Cash application. Month-end processes.

The goal is to remove friction where it exists, not to rebuild the whole system.

Don’t automate for the sake of it

One of the strongest themes from the discussion was resisting the temptation to chase AI because everyone else is.

Social media makes it feel as though every company has already transformed its finance function while they haven’t.

Most businesses are still experimenting.

In many cases, the smartest solution isn’t a new AI platform at all. It might simply be making better use of the systems you already pay for.

Modern ERPs, FP&A platforms and accounting software increasingly include AI capabilities as standard. Before investing in another layer of technology, it’s worth asking whether you’re getting the most from the tools already sitting inside your finance stack.

The CFO’s job hasn’t become less important

If anything, AI has made the role of the CFO even more valuable.

Finance isn’t just about producing numbers. It’s about helping leadership teams make decisions based on those numbers.

That’s where judgement comes in.

A finance leader can’t walk into a board meeting with figures they’re only mostly confident in. Investors don’t accept “the AI generated it” as an explanation if something is wrong.

Accuracy, accountability and trust still matter.

That’s why AI works best as an assistant rather than a decision-maker.

It can reduce manual work, speed up analysis and surface insights faster than ever before. But someone still needs to apply commercial judgement, challenge assumptions and understand the wider context behind every recommendation.

That responsibility isn’t going away anytime soon.

Finance teams are changing

There’s been plenty of speculation about whether AI will reduce the size of finance teams.

So far, that isn’t what we’re seeing.

Instead, the skills companies are looking for are changing.

Businesses increasingly want finance professionals who can work alongside product and engineering teams, understand technology and improve processes across the organisation.

Technical curiosity is becoming just as valuable as technical accounting knowledge.

That doesn’t mean every CFO needs to become a software engineer.

It does mean understanding how technology can support the business and knowing which problems are worth solving, though.

The finance leaders who thrive over the next few years are likely to be those who combine commercial thinking with technological confidence.

Growth still matters. So does efficiency.

The conversation around growth versus profitability has matured.

For venture-backed businesses with genuinely scalable opportunities, aggressive growth remains the priority.

But investors have raised the bar.

Businesses are now expected to demonstrate stronger unit economics, better operational discipline and clearer paths to sustainable growth alongside impressive revenue numbers.

For companies sitting somewhere between venture growth and profitability, the challenge is slightly different.

Cash management, capital allocation and operational efficiency become just as important as top-line growth.

Finance leaders are helping founders navigate those trade-offs every day.

The biggest commercial question is ROI

Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the discussion wasn’t whether businesses should adopt AI, because as we already know, most already are.

The real question is whether those investments generate meaningful returns.

AI isn’t free, and finance leaders are increasingly asking the same commercial question they would ask about any investment.

Is this creating enough value to justify the cost?