When it comes to AI in finance, the hype is hitting the fan.

At the 2026 Gartner Finance Symposium/Xpo, VP analyst Clement Christensen described executives’ prevailing sentiment toward AI as “hopeful disappointment.” “It sounds like this: ‘Yeah, we’ve seen some cool stuff, but it hasn’t translated into any ROI yet,’” he said during a keynote session.

“We’re in the trough of disillusionment,” his colleague and co-presenter, VP analyst Tamara Shipley, said, pointing to Gartner research that shows only one in three AI initiatives increase productivity, while just one in five leads to measurable ROI.

Still, AI’s capabilities as well as companies’ willingness to embrace the technology have increased dramatically over the past year. “The maturity of the models and the tools that are available have exponentially increased,” Rajiv Ramachandran, SVP and CPO of invoice to pay at Coupa, told CFO Brew. He’s getting more granular questions from customers, he said, that suggest “they’re thinking about putting something into production, not thinking about ‘Hey, can I play around with this for another couple of weeks?’”

But as companies move past the pilot stage, problems crop up. CFOs, consultants, and vendors who spoke with CFO Brew at Gartner described many AI growing pains.

“My ultimate goal is not to actually work on my laptop,” one CFO said.—CV

Geopolitical shocks like the US-Israel war with Iran result in devastating loss of life. They can also carry major consequences in global trade and commerce, as seen with blockades in the Strait of Hormuz. Thus, it should be no surprise that CFOs are attuned to heightened geopolitical volatility.

Aidana Zhakupbekova, CFO of expense-management software firm Rydoo, said that although organizations may want to increase their investments in areas like technology and R&D, macro issues like geopolitical uncertainty and tariffs make it “much harder to control and plan investments.” (The IMF recently lowered global growth expectations.)

Zhakupbekova recently chatted with CFO Brew about budgeting, visibility into spending, and pivoting quickly to keep down costs.

How do CFOs balance needed investments with controlling costs related to geopolitical events like the war in Iran? Does the war and related disruption in the Strait of Hormuz change the calculus of that balance?

I think there are a couple of things there. The first one is just pure volatility; it’s harder to predict [costs]. For example, Rydoo is a tech company, so we’re not necessarily hit as hard as maybe some manufacturers, but yet even we see the volatility of cost [in] investments…So even within our business, the traditional budgets that I used to do are no longer acceptable, to be honest with you. The quarterly forecast updates can be outdated, too. And we see the same with our clients, especially in heavy industries. They’re hit quite hard, and it’s just harder to plan. In the initial budget, I think all of us are now buffering a lot more than we used to do maybe a couple of years ago.

What Rydoo’s CFO is doing to cut travel costs.—AZ

Picture it now—the “future” (read: early 2000s) as speculated in the 1950s: You’d take your flying car to work, scarf down some freeze-dried food, and return to your fully automated smart home, which absolutely had to include a robotic dog, for some reason.

It’s the future that wasn’t. And that same brand of overeager speculation could apply to a much less flashy event: The end of quarterly reporting, which almost certainly wouldn’t involve jetpacks or robot dogs.

But when the Wall Street Journal first broke news in March of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s plans to draft a proposal eliminating public companies’ longstanding quarterly reporting requirement and offering a semiannual reporting option, you’d be forgiven for assuming a seismic shift was afoot in corporate America, given the attendant hoopla. Was the sky falling?

Now that the dust has settled, a more interesting future is emerging: Experts have argued the SEC’s potential proposal may not actually disrupt business as usual as much as first anticipated. But CFOs may nevertheless have to make a case for one reporting cadence over the other, and that could lead to deeper questions.

Why CFOs will be watching to see if their peers switch cadences.—NP