The leash problem
In 1965 a Bletchley Park codebreaker said our first ultraintelligent machine would be the last thing we invented, provided it remained compliant enough to explain how we could control it. We now depend entirely on that proviso…
Insights / Topic
AI
29 essays on this topic.
Buffett on moats when cognition is a commodity
More than 80% of businesses across industry-agnostic software segments now screen as having a weak vertical moat. A moat’s value depends entirely on what competitors cannot rent, and anybody can now rent reasoning by the token.
Budgeting for deflation
In March a company spent an average of $1.15 per million AI tokens. By September it paid 68 cents. Every budgeting process I know assumes input costs rise each year, and this input keeps falling in price.
The landlord finances the tenant
A chip supplier is discussing anchoring its own customer's $100bn listing. When that supplier finances the customer, some revenue represents its own money flowing back, and revenue no longer provides independent evidence of demand.
The verification premium
Reviewing a piece of AI work costs $86, compared with $361 to do it yourself. It looks like a saving of three-quarters, and it is, but that $86 is priced in expert hours and has stayed the same even as the cost of generating the work has dropped a thousandfold.
The cognitive supply chain
Most firms have quietly acquired a critical supplier they don't manage — for the most important input they buy: thinking. Procurement solved this problem decades ago. It's time to apply the discipline to cognition.
Bayesian thinking: Why CFOs need it more than they admit
Finance is built on the premise that an answer is either right or wrong. The business it reports on has never worked that way — which is why the habit of updating cleanly is a CFO's real advantage.
When cognition becomes metered
A firm can now rent increments of thinking — bounded units of cognitive work, metered and priced like compute. That sounds like a pricing detail. It isn't. It changes what the cost structure of a firm is made of.
The future finance talent stack: Why the best finance teams will look less like finance teams
The next great finance hire may not look like a traditional finance hire at all. Finance is shifting from a processing engine to a decision engine, and the talent stack has to follow…
Pricing the future: How CFOs should read the SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs
Three landmark IPOs are coming. Read them through capital structure, governance, and partner dependency — not the hype.
The 600-year curve: Why your "AI anxiety" is actually history repeating itself.
I want you to look at the graph for a second. Really look at it. Look hard.
- #ai
- #risk
- #reflections
Where there is will, there is wAI
There’s a massive, hidden advantage to the fact that Finance has been the "under-invested child" of the fintech world for the last decade.
What keeps a Fintech CFO up at night (hint: it's not just burn rate)
Being a CFO in fintech sounds cool—until it’s 2:47am and you're wide awake, wondering if your fraud controls holds, your Series C runway will stretch, or your compliance stack i…
Winning in chaos
Ill thought tariffs, and unthought taxes are squeezing margins. Populist political agendas are resulting in unwanted (and shall I say unnecessary) challenges to the fragile busi…
Should CFOs build strategic flexibility as opposed to strategic plans?
Strategic planning and strategic preparation, while closely related, offer distinct approaches to achieving organizational success. For a CFO, understanding the nuances between…
Reflecting on a year of insights: Final thoughts for 2024
As we approach the close of 2024, I find myself revisiting the series of articles I’ve shared here on LinkedIn over the past twelve months. When I began posting about a year ago…
If you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice
This piece is a bit off-the-track as far as my usual writing goes - its neither finance, nor AI, nor anything that that needs any specialist knowledge. Yet, it is relevant to ev…
Enhancing financial data storytelling: A CFO's cheat sheet
In November 2023, I had written a post explaining why storytelling is a CFO’s secret superpower. Having seen firsthand how compelling narratives can transform dry numbers into i…
Using LLMs: A cheat sheet for CFOs
The role of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is evolving and leveraging technology has become even more important to create value. After all, how good can a CFO be if they can't…
Mastering the matrix: How curiosity and grit shape winning teams
In a world where change is the only constant, the art of building great teams requires more than just matching skills to roles. It demands a deeper understanding of the innate q…
Crowdsourcing financial decisions: When more cooks may not spoil the broth
Today, I'm writing about a topic that marries the ancient wisdom of collective decision-making with the cutting-edge challenges faced by modern CFOs. Inspired by the recent re-r…
The bottomline of customer happiness: 3 CX stories and a CFO
In today's fiercely competitive business landscape, customer experience can significantly influence a company's reputation and, ultimately, its financial health. While often ove…
Leadership in an era of GenAI
In continuation of my recent post on the Future of GPT, I have been thinking about the role of leadership in the swiftly evolving landscape of General Artificial Intelligence (G…
Future of GPT
Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPT) are a breakthrough, in the field of intelligence. They have completely revolutionized our understanding of what machines can do with the…
Evolving financial analytics: Navigating beyond traditional statements in the digital age
In this age of information, the significance and usefulness of traditional financial statements, for assessing a company’s wellbeing have become a topic of intense debate. As a…
"Once upon a balance sheet": 10 reasons why storytelling is a CFO's secret superpower
In the world of finance, numbers reign supreme. But what happens when the CFO decides to take a page out of a storyteller's book? Magic. Here are ten compelling reasons why the…
High-wire acts in high finance: The CFO’s circus of growth vs. cash flow
As CFOs, we are often likened to navigators steering through the treacherous waters of corporate finance, where the twin beacons of growth and cash flow guide our journey. The p…
From bean counting to bots
CFOs can harness the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to create value in several distinct ways. In essence, the com…
10 commandments for the experienced CFO
It’s more than a year since I posted on LinkedIn about the 10 commandments for the newbie CFO. It got over 4,000 impressions (number of times the post was displayed on a screen)…