If you had to pick a word to describe the state of hiring in 2026, we have a feeling the word “simple” wouldn’t exactly come to mind.

What’s a word that sounds like complex, looks like complex, and means complex? Because that’s closer to what we’re looking for.

“Businesses have entered into 2026 with more skills gaps and more complex hiring conditions,” Brandi Britton, executive director of contract finance and accounting at talent solutions and business consulting firm Robert Half, told CFO Brew. “Frankly, I think we’ve seen it [for] a long time.”

In a report released February 9 by Robert Half, of 2,000 hiring managers surveyed, 62% said skills gaps were more noticeable now than a year ago.

Finance gap. Fun news: It’s similarly difficult for finance teams. Within finance and accounting teams, Britton noted that 53% of respondents reported the skills gap at their organization became more apparent compared with one year ago.

Keep reading.—NP

Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere except inside our tiny human brains, although that may not be off-limits, either.

The M&A landscape is no exception. The desire to have a piece of AI is driving M&A demand, and even evolving the dealmaking process itself, experts told CFO Brew.

Across industries, organizations are under pressure to transform through AI and boost both productivity and profitability, according to Josh Putnam, EY-Parthenon global and Americas corporate finance leader.

“C-suite execs learn that organic transformation is a time-consuming task, particularly when you're looking at technology, when you’re trying to stay ahead of trends, and when you’re trying to stay ahead of revenue growth and client pricing,” Putnam told CFO Brew.

Keep reading.—AZ

AI bookkeeping software company Botkeeper is no longer. Over the weekend of February 7–8, in a post on its home page, the company announced that it was going out of business.

A well-known name in accounting circles, Botkeeper, founded in 2015, secured almost $90 million in funding from investors including Gradient Ventures, formerly part of Google. It hosted a conference called AI Unchained, was twice named to Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies lists, and boasted among its hundreds of clients Withum, the nation’s 22nd-largest accounting firm.

And it was known for innovation. Botkeeper “blazed a lot of new trails,” David Cieslak, a CPA and chief cloud officer and EVP at RKL eSolutions, and a frequent speaker on accounting software, told CFO Brew. Byron Patrick, a CPA and senior project manager at Karbon, and a Botkeeper employee from 2019–22, agreed. “Botkeeper, I think, was one of the earliest AI-focused tools in the profession,” Patrick told CFO Brew.

What went wrong? In a statement to the Botkeeper community, CEO and founder Enrico Palmerino blamed the company’s downfall on a “‘perfect storm’ of macro-economic shifts that arrived more swiftly than we could course-correct.” Toward the end of 2025, he said, it faced “a series of unexpected industry consolidation that significantly impacted our largest clients.”

Keep reading.—CV