ACCOUNTING

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Some AI proponents claim that soon, pretty much everyone will be able to vibe-code their own tools and agents. But many companies have run into roadblocks attempting to implement or scale AI: messy data, rising costs, and reluctant staff among them. Skeptics question whether AI has much value, or even whether its ROI can be measured at all.

But what some accountants are achieving with AI might have SaaS companies looking anxiously over their shoulders. Nathaniel Dycus, VP and global controller at Estonian CRM software company Pipedrive, built an accounting close tool in a matter of months using Gemini—without any programming experience. Dycus’s vibe-coded app has replaced the finance team’s commercial close management tool, his CFO, Regi Vengalil, told CFO Brew.

A messy manual close. Pipedrive, a 16-year-old company targeting small and medium-sized businesses, reached “unicorn” status in 2020 with a $1.5 billion valuation. It has more than 800 employees.

That global reach caused headaches for the accounting team, which had members spread across time zones in the US, Estonia, the UK, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries, Dycus said. Sometimes a team member would mark close-related tasks as completed or reviewed on different days than the rest of the team. “We had a struggle with collaboration on month-end close and how to look at it as one consolidated process,” he said.

Why Pipedrive didn’t go with a commercially available solution.—CV

      

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BANKS

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The big banks may want to send Elon Musk (and SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen) a fruit basket.

The nation’s largest lenders posted strong—and in some cases, record-breaking—returns in the second quarter, and IPOs like SpaceX’s $2 trillion launch were a major reason.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (BofA), Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citi all worked on the SpaceX IPO in some capacity. The banks also advised on or underwrote some other major deals in a quarter chockablock with them, including the $67 billion NextEra-Dominion Energy merger (JPMorgan, BofA, Wells Fargo), Alphabet’s $85 billion equity raise (JPMorgan, Goldman), the $44.8 billion Unilever-McCormick merger (Citi), and Apollo’s $35 billion financing deal with Anthropic (Wells Fargo).

The banks raked in the fees—Goldman’s equities underwriting revenue rose an eye-watering 130% YoY last quarter, while BofA’s investment banking fees were up 50% and Citi’s 44%. JPMorgan Chase’s rose 30%, which CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement were at “the highest level since 2021.”

The size of the deal pipeline has banks expecting the party to continue.—CV

      

IT STRATEGY

Morning Brew Design

IT Brew Editor’s note: Welcome to the first installment in Your Tech Stack, an occasional series about, well, your tech stack. How do you build it? Should you go with an all-in-one provider or take a mix-and-match approach? What’s the best bang for your buck?

When teams at the AI accounts receivable startup Daylit consider whether to invest in a new piece of software, they go through a three-step checklist, according to co-founder and CEO Jared Shulman.

Would the software automate or help with an existing documented process? Is there readily accessible data for it to use? And would there be a human in the loop to evaluate the results?

“On the go-to-market side, we’re buyers of lots of different tools to get automation in our go-to-market efforts—Valley is an example of one that’s pulling data from LinkedIn,” Shulman said. “But before we buy that product, we need to know, is there a process in place? What do we do on the go-to-market side to actually reach out to these customers?”

Should you choose best-in-breed or all-in-one? IT Brew reports on the essential questions to ask.—PK

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat. 911.5 million shares. That’s the amount of SpaceX stock that will be available to sell two days after the rocket company releases its second-quarter earnings, expected to be in August. That’s more than the 555.6 million shares it initially sold to the public. (Business Insider)

Quote. “This is the other foot dropping in terms of the way Magnum is trying to destroy the social values of Ben & Jerry’s.”—Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, on the shutdown of Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, the philanthropy arm of the ice cream maker (Associated Press)

Read. Foundation Future Industries, the humanoid company backed by Eric Trump, is developing robot supersoldiers. (Wired)

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