Balancing costs and securing funding can be acute challenges for finance executives in the biotechnology space, who must raise capital for products that can take over a decade to develop with no guarantee of success.

“Funds are always an issue for every biotechnology company,” according to Robert Hoffman, CFO of CytoDyn, a clinical-stage biotech company developing a drug, Leronlimab, intended to treat patients with solid-tumor cancers.

When Hoffman, a highly experienced biotech CFO and board member, joined the company in May 2025, it was looking to enroll its first colorectal cancer patient in a phase two trial. It’s now fully enrolled.

In his first year as CFO, Hoffman has pursued fresh sources of capital, put spending under the microscope, and contributed to CytoDyn’s search for a strategic partner. Hoffman said his guiding light throughout has been a desire “to give back to society [and] help, perhaps, a large group of patients.”

Capital idea. CytoDyn laid out three strategic objectives in its February 2026 quarterly filing: continue the colorectal cancer trial, test the drug’s effectiveness on other cancers including triple-negative breast cancer, and continue researching a long-acting version of Leronlimab. “We may need significant additional funding to execute the above business strategy in full, which may include conducting a variety of additional pre-clinical studies and clinical trials,” the company noted.

Keep reading.—AZ

To get a sense of how much AI has influenced the accounting profession, look no further than LinkedIn.

Job postings requiring AI skills have proliferated at the Big Four over the past year, according to the Financial Times. Staff at the newspaper examined 50,000 job listings at Big Four firms in English-speaking countries between January 2020 and January 2026. In 2025, they found, there were more than twice as many job postings where AI skills were a core requirement (nearly 7%) as there were listings for audit jobs (almost 3%).

Many of the job postings that mentioned AI as a requirement appeared to be for non-accounting roles, such as “generative AI engineers and machine learning experts in data science,” the FT observed. But others were accounting-related. KPMG, for instance, sought a manager with “chatbot prompt engineering” expertise, while EY posted a role for a senior associate who could “help clients ‘embrace’ generative AI” in tax, the FT said.

KPMG had the highest share of job postings requesting AI skills: Nearly 10% of listings mentioned AI as a core requirement.

Keep reading.—CV

TL;DR: Anthropic confidentially filed for an IPO on Monday, jumping ahead of rival OpenAI in the race to go public—but rising Claude costs and a looming SpaceX listing could complicate its big moment.

What happened: Anthropic is fresh off a $65 billion fundraising round that valued the company at $965 billion, making it the most valuable private AI company on the planet. An IPO is expected as early as October. While everyone’s got plenty of takes, here are the three things worth knowing:

1. Anthropic was notably noncommittal in its announcement, hedging that the move “gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review.” It’s a caveat that’s both unnecessary and unusual, as companies don't typically leave themselves that kind of public off-ramp when they file.
2. The first-mover advantage is critical for Anthropic in a race against rival OpenAI. Historically, businesses in similar sectors go public in a “cluster,” and those that go later tend to be less successful. Plus, with a SpaceX mega-listing in the mix, the earlier IPOs are likely to gobble up available capital. But moving first only works when the IPO meets expectations—some analysts are reminded of the Lyft-Uber IPO debacle in 2019, when Lyft’s market debut didn’t live up to its hype and its subsequent decline directly impacted Uber’s listing two months later. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for his part, downplayed the IPO race on CNBC.
3. Anthropic is heading toward a public offering just as companies—its biggest customers—are hitting an AI spending wall. Switching to cheaper models has become more appealing as “some open source LLMs are as good without the price tag,” Mill co-founder Matt Rogers told Axios. Any meaningful corporate pullback could undercut Anthropic’s revenue at the same moment investors are scrutinizing it.

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—LC

Before engaging the board, the CFO needs to measure the potential benefits and understand the investor perspective. Read how to handle that conversation here.