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.” During a keynote session, he said “It sounds like this: ‘Yeah, we’ve seen some cool stuff, but it hasn’t translated into any ROI yet.’”

“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 increases 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.

More on what CFOs are saying about the state of AI in finance.—CV

The SEC’s climate disclosure rule has been effectively dead for a while, and the commission set into motion last week the process to make things official.

On Friday, the SEC formally proposed rescinding a Biden-era set of rules requiring public companies to disclose climate-change risks affecting them as well as their greenhouse gas emissions. The agency had paused the rule’s implementation amid legal challenges in 2024. Then last year the SEC, under the leadership of new Chair Paul Atkins, said it would no longer defend the rule in court.

Friday’s proposed rescission, which includes a 60-day comment period, is “a foregone conclusion that’s been widely anticipated for nearly two years,” Steve Soter, VP and industry principal at Workiva, told CFO Brew in an email.

Still, the formal process has supporters cheering and opponents jeering.

You’re not off the hook yet.—AZ

The stock market may be flying past red flags and hitting new peaks regularly, but investors aren’t letting bitcoin off the hook so easily.

The blue-chip cryptocurrency is down 25.35% year to date, as geopolitical chaos and higher-for-longer interest rates have spooked investors. Bitcoin’s performance has been so rough that it’s lagging stocks by the largest margin since 2019.

Bitcoin is out of vogue: Part of the problem is that retail investors, who were once starstruck by the volatile digital asset, have moved on, preferring to send shares of AI stocks to the moon. Just look at ETFs tracking bitcoin, which have lost about $3.4 billion since May, according to Bloomberg.

On top of that, institutional investors are instead looking toward the next big thing in crypto—tokenization—according to the Wall Street Journal. Even the biggest bitcoin bulls are getting spooked: Michael Saylor’s Strategy just sold 32 tokens last week for the first time since 2022’s crypto winter. Striking, given that Strategy’s entire business model revolved around becoming a stock play on bitcoin by guzzling tokens at a rabid clip.

The next big thing? The HYPE token, Brew Markets says.—LB

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout-out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.