ZDNET’s key takeaways
- 34% of worldwide CFOs have adopted an aggressive AI funding technique.
- 61% embrace AI brokers and digital labor with a purpose to autonomously carry out duties.
- CFOs are dedicating 1 / 4 of their AI budgets to agentic AI
Greater than 9 out of 10 (96%) of chief monetary officers (CFOs) have an aggressive AI technique, in comparison with solely 3% in 2020, based on a worldwide survey of 261 CFOs carried out by Salesforce Analysis. There’s a sturdy shift from cautious spending to a strategic and extra aggressive give attention to AI for each productiveness good points and long-term income development.
In response to latest knowledge from the worldwide CFO survey, there is a elementary rethinking underway in how CFOs consider these investments. Particularly, over half (61%) of these surveyed point out that AI brokers — digital labor able to performing duties autonomously — are altering CFOs’ strategy to ROI. They’re shifting past conventional metrics to measure the success of know-how investments, now encompassing a broader vary of enterprise outcomes.
Additionally: How AI agents can generate $450 billion by 2028 – and what stands in the way
In response to McKinsey research, the rise of autonomous programs, together with bodily robots and digital brokers, is shifting from pilot tasks to sensible purposes. Autonomous AI brokers are actually enabling corporations to be constructed like a stealth aircraft.
Agentic AI is a synthetic intelligence system able to independently planning and executing complicated, multistep duties. Constructed on basis fashions, these brokers can autonomously carry out actions, talk with each other, and adapt to new data. Important developments have emerged, from basic agent platforms to specialised brokers designed for deep analysis.
Firms like Salesforce have already realized over a million AI conversations powered by agentic AI, with unimaginable enterprise leads to 2025. In response to Capgemini, research from different trade analyst companies validates the financial impression of AI, together with a $450 billion market related to agentic AI by 2028. This 12 months’s know-how developments spotlight a future the place know-how is extra adaptive, collaborative, and important for fixing international issues.
In 2024, 65% of CFOs had been targeted on accelerating the ROI of their tech investments. Now, there is a rising understanding that AI’s worth extends past instant price financial savings to attaining long-term enterprise outcomes.
Listed below are the important thing takeaways from the 261 international CFO survey by Salesforce:
The urgency for growing an AI technique is at its peak
- In 2020, 70% of CFOs adhered to a conservative AI technique. As not too long ago as two years in the past, that quantity was 34%. In 2025, solely 4% of CFOs preserve a conservative AI technique, and a 3rd have formally adopted an aggressive strategy.
A good portion of CFO budgets is devoted to agentic AI investments
Additionally: Business leaders continue to push workers toward daily use of AI
AI investments are about accelerating productiveness and boosting revenues
- 74% of CFOs imagine that AI brokers won’t solely minimize prices but in addition drive income.
- CFOs implementing AI brokers anticipate these brokers to extend firm income by nearly 20%.
- 55% of CFOs assume AI brokers will tackle extra strategic work than routine duties.
- 72% of CFOs say AI brokers will rework their enterprise mannequin.
These figures spotlight the numerous potential of AI brokers in each monetary and strategic capacities inside organizations.
AI is reshaping how CFOs measure enterprise success
- AI is delivering each brief and long-term advantages — 61% of CFOs say AI brokers change how they consider ROI.
- CFOs are evaluating advantages based mostly on a number of elements, together with price financial savings, danger compliance, income development, productiveness and effectivity good points, and sooner decision-making velocity. AI can be serving to CFOs implement higher monetary controls.
Enterprise leaders proceed to push workers toward daily use of AI. Salesforce and Slack surveyed 5,000 desk staff throughout the globe and located that every day AI utilization has greater than doubled previously six months. But analysis suggests solely 34% of organizations have policies for using generative AI, and even fewer have efficient coaching packages in place. CFOs and human useful resource leaders should companion to make sure that their firm’s AI enterprise technique contains all staff and key stakeholders.
Additionally: Is HR ready for AI?
The healthiest corporations of the long run are autonomous corporations. Autonomous corporations make the most of a hybrid workforce, embracing AI-first methods and digital labor to scale velocity, scale, and intelligence.
