CFOVILLE

Getty Images

Private equity-backed CFOs and their sponsors navigate complex relationships that are rooted in shared goals, but the parties often come from different perspectives. And a recent trend toward extended hold times for portfolio companies means CFOs and their sponsors—the purse holders and growth architects—are spending more time together.

Not all CFOs will think that’s a good thing. Not to fret, though. CFOs coming into a PE-backed company will find general alignment between the sponsor’s goals and those of the finance department.

For example, a CFO’s cost discipline goals are not detached from a sponsor’s goals for growth, and they should be thought of in tandem rather than competitively, finance and private equity consultancy Riveron CFO Tony Ciotti told CFO Brew.

“Cost discipline and growth are…mutually reinforcing when they’re done correctly. And in a PE-backed environment, contrary to popular belief, the goal is not to dramatically cut costs,” Ciotti added. “We’re all focused on the same thing, which is creating sustainable enterprise value. Regardless of short term, long term, that is the big goal.”

Success is not about delivering perfect results.—DM

      

Sponsored By Paystand

Whether you’ve got plain, old opinions or takes hot enough to set your entire finance department on fire, Paystand’s got just the thing for you.

Paystand’s Future of Finance Survey is where you can share your thoughts, opinions, and hot takes. They’re asking finance leaders to talk about how their teams think about cash flow, forecasting, automation, and the future of the finance function.

Your opinions will help shape an upcoming Paystand benchmarking report. And Paystand won’t stop there. After their report is done, they’ll use it to create even more content, like webinars and other programming.

Spill the tea on all things finance.

ACCOUNTING

Kashif Ali

The accounting profession’s adoption of AI has intensified over the past year. At AICPA’s 2026 Engage conference, CFO Brew spoke with the CEOs of three software companies of different sizes to get their perspective on how ready accounting is for AI, how the technology might change the profession, and what pain points firms experience as they integrate AI.

Journalist-turned-entrepreneur Kashif Ali is CEO of AI tax assistant software company TaxGPT, which he founded in 2023. He shared his thoughts on what he’s seeing as the accounting profession comes to grips with AI.

What kinds of questions are you getting from clients or potential customers about AI?

First of all, people are trying to figure out how to work better. The conversation has changed a lot in the last year or so. Previously, people used to approach AI with skepticism, like, is it going to hallucinate? We still get asked those questions, but now they are secondary questions, and we have answers to that. We have hallucination control mechanisms, we provide sources, we build trust and relationships…

How to utilize it very effectively, that’s the number one ask that we hear from enterprises. The problem there is a lot of the time, enterprises…the way they are looking at AI, they’re thinking it can solve end-to-end problems…AI is still middle-to-middle. You define a task, and human judgment is required, so a human can jump in and help AI do work better…

SMBs and mid-market firms are adopting AI faster, tax software CEO says.—CV

      

BUDGETING

Morning Brew Inc, Photos: Adobe Stock

It was the splurgiest of times, it was the thriftiest of times—both can be true of IT budgets right now, depending on the price tag attached to every exec’s favorite two-letter buzzword.

While some companies are starting to get sticker shock from all their AI spending, investment in the technology continues to be a top priority for IT leaders. That means fewer resources left for more quotidian line items like infrastructure maintenance or legacy software contracts.

A recent Goldman Sachs survey of CIOs found that 42% of respondents—up from 35% in a previous survey last November—now expect AI to exceed 10% of their budgets in the next three years. Meanwhile, overall IT spending dipped slightly, and funding for two-thirds of AI inference costs is coming from budget reallocation, according to the survey.

“There may be some crowding out of category spend not tied to AI,” Goldman analysts led by Gabriela Borges wrote in the note. “[And] there may be some hesitancy on committing to larger IT projects before the impact of AI on core budget categories is clear.”

Other parts of the tech stack can be neglected.—PK

      

Sponsored By CloudZero

AI just got its last blank check. Now it’s up to you to prove that your AI spend is actually paying off. CloudZero has the stats to back up this shift in AI funding. They recently surveyed 260 finance executives on measuring AI spend and ROI. Take a look at the key takeaways.

market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: 16%. That’s how much more beef steak costs per pound this year than last. Still, steak sales were up the July 4 weekend, a sign consumers might be looking for “affordable luxury.” 🥩 (CNBC)

Quote: “They may have realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy.”—MIT economics professor David Autor, on tech company CEOs’ pivot away from “AI is coming for your job” (Wall Street Journal)

Read: How Bath and Body Works shrank its supply chain. (New York Times)

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Credit: Sinohe Terrero

Sinohe Terrero, COO and CFO at Envoy, told CFO Brew that his superpower as an executive is doing the hard things. Learn more about his experience in the early years of Etsy and about his approach to jumping between ops and finance at Envoy.