TECH BUDGETS

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Managing the costs of AI has made CFOs’ lives a lot more complicated.

Many software providers with AI tools have abandoned seat-based pricing, a formerly fairly predictable cost for their customers. This change “makes it harder for us as CFOs because now we suddenly are dealing with consumption-based or performance-based pricing,” Matthias Steinberg, CFO of MindBridge, told CFO Brew.

Token-based pricing “makes you nervous,” Patrick Villanova, CFO of BlackLine, an accounting software provider, told us. “I don’t know what 10 tokens equals in terms of an outcome. I don’t know what the value of that is.” Now, he said, “you have to track the rate of consumption of these tokens very carefully. You have to make sure your engineers are being very cautious about how they consume Claude, how they use it.”

As CFOs at SaaS companies that serve the Big Four accounting firms and Fortune 500 companies, Steinberg and Villanova see both sides of the AI pricing equation. They shared how their organizations are keeping down AI costs.

Know outcomes before negotiating. When negotiating with software vendors, “always define the outcome first,” Villanova suggests. “People always start with price. Never start with pricing.”

A control that makes it easier for employees to choose the most cost-effective model.—CV

      

Sponsored By Hyland

At Hyland CommunityLIVE 2026, Alex Kantrowitz sat down with Hyland’s CPO Mike Campbell.

They dug into the unglamorous stuff that determines whether enterprise AI ships or stalls, like connecting content scattered across systems, layering in industry-specific context, and coordinating multiple agents under tight governance.

Their conversation unpacks Hyland’s Enterprise Context Engine, which pulls content from emails, visit summaries, imaging, letters, and more. It then organizes it through industry ontologies, so that agents receive exactly what they need in seconds.

From there, an agent mesh puts specialized agents to work on completeness checks, fraud detection, creditworthiness, and product selection—all acting on shared context.

Governance is baked in through agent passports that define what each agent can access and a control tower that exposes decision logic and provides kill switches.

From hospital referrals to loan decisions, this is what moving past demos to durable, production-grade AI looks like.

Watch the full replay.

CFOVILLE

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We get it. You’re in vacation mode. You’re not obsessively checking LinkedIn like your life (ahem, job) depends on it.

Fear not: We’ve rounded up some of the biggest CFO comings and goings of the year thus far…on the extremely off chance that you’re not a LinkedIn influencer.

Call waiting. AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches will retire at the end of the year, according to a—you guessed it—LinkedIn post where he called his time at the telecom company “one of the most meaningful chapters” of his career.

The company selected Jennifer Biry, former CFO and COO of McAfee, to succeed Desroches, who will officially step down on December 31, per a securities filing. Earlier in her career, Biry had spent more than 20 years in a variety of roles at AT&T before leaving for AT&T subsidiary WarnerMedia at the end of 2020.

“AT&T played an important role in shaping my career,” Biry said in a LinkedIn post. “The opportunity to return to the company at such a pivotal point in its transformation is a full-circle moment that truly feels like coming home.”

Who will be heading up finance at American Eagle Outfitters, and other changes.—NP

      

STARTUP CAPITAL

Amelia Kinsinger

So you’ve got an idea for a business. Now you need funding.

Many early-stage founders may not be ready for venture capital. Some may never want to take outside funding. But it takes bucks to build, and there are several funding pathways, depending on a founder’s goals.

But first. Before deciding on a pre-revenue funding option, early-stage founders should ask themselves a few questions: What problem are they trying to solve? Why would customers pay for their solution? And who should be on their team?

“These are the things that you have to have super clear,” Aidan Madigan-Curtis, partner at VC firm Eclipse, told Morning Brew. “The capital will follow getting those things right, whether it’s venture capital, early accelerator capital, angel capital, or…non-dilutives.”

From there, she suggested that founders look within their networks for people with entrepreneurial experience, including potential angel investors—and they shouldn’t be shy about asking them to write a check.

Founder Brew explains VC capital vs. bootstrapping and other capital raising options for pre-revenue businesses.—JG

      

Sponsored By CloudZero

Keep track of every dollar. A new CloudZero survey found that 87% of finance leaders say they must tie AI spend to business outcomes within the year. The problem? Only 22% can actually do that today. See how you can prove that your AI spend is paying off in the full report.

market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: 19%. That’s how much foot traffic at Taco Bell dropped last Friday, compared with the Friday daily average between Jan. 1 and July 6. Other quick-service restaurants also suffered a decline due to the cyclospora outbreak. 🦠 (Bloomberg)

Quote: “If you’re in the world of financial services or a large public company, you can breathe a lot easier.”—Former federal prosecutor Evan T. Barr, on the DOJ’s move away from prosecuting corporate wrongdoing (Wall Street Journal)

Read: At all the hyperscalers, capex outweighs free cash flow. Trouble may lie ahead for more than just Oracle. 🫧 (New York Times)

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Learn how Coca-Cola put 20 billion at stake in a dispute regarding how Coke reports profits in the US vs abroad.