What's Moving in
‍CFO World

Warren Buffett's exit as Berkshire Hathaway chairman came with one last lesson on succession: the person who allocates the capital and the person who guards the culture don't have to be the same. Any CFO who wants the CEO job should study that split closely.

Chevron is taking Eimear Bonner out of the CFO chair and handing her the oil, products and gas business that drives the company. If you want the CEO job one day, her path tells you more about how boards build leaders than any succession framework I have read.

A new Crist Kolder report counts 71 chief AI officers across the Fortune 500 and S&P 500. If you are a CFO who believes AI strategy is becoming part of your job, someone else may be getting hired to own it.

CFOs are the executives most willing to defer to AI over their own instincts. That finding from the Board 2026 Planning Intelligence Report is worth sitting with before you decide whether it is a good thing.

Upflow launched a new category this week: Financial Relationship Management. The idea is simple and overdue that the financial dimension of the customer relationship deserves the same intentionality as sales or customer success. Here is what it means for how you run your team.

Brian Beaupre has been in finance leadership long enough to watch the function transform three times. He's watched manual work get automated, watched finance become a data democratisation function, and now he's watching AI absorb the analytical layer that built careers like his. What he said about it at the CFO Leadership Council's Boston conference this month is worth paying attention to.

Even as the macro outlook dips for the second consecutive quarter, CFOs are leaning into risk and betting on their own companies. The tension is real, and the best finance leaders are using it to their advantage.

Sarah Friar just drew a line in the sand on what she expects from finance talent. The question every CFO should be asking is whether their team would make it past her first screen.

The CFO-to-CEO pipeline has never been stronger. And the reasons why tell you exactly what boards are actually looking for in a leader right now.

The claim making the rounds this week: xAI's finance chief argues AI will make the CFO role obsolete within four years. The irony is hard to miss. xAI hired a CFO, then lost one, in a period that looks nothing like a seamless handoff to AI-managed accounts.