If you’re a CFO, chances are that at the beginning of your career, this job was something else entirely. Modern CFOs are strategists, technologists and tacticians—and they still balance the books. AI is accelerating that transformation—but only when deployed thoughtfully and used well.

I spoke with Scott McDermott, CFO of AI-powered financial business platform Esker, about how to successfully upgrade your finance department, both through building strategy and using AI. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

We’re taking a short break next week, so the next edition of Forbes CFO will land in your inboxes on Tuesday, June 16.

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Looking at corporate profits alone, these are boom times. In the last quarter, corporate profit hit a new record of $4.39 trillion, writes Forbes senior contributor Erik Sherman. Corporate profits have skyrocketed—especially since the Covid-19 pandemic—and keep on increasing. And it isn’t just the tech sector—retail trade, construction, wholesale trades, durable goods manufacturing and healthcare are responsible for 73% of the post-pandemic corporate profit surge. Most of that money—76%—has gone toward shareholder dividends, but 15% represented retained profits.

Companies can increase profits by passing along higher costs to consumers, and today’s consumers are feeling more and more strain. Forbes senior contributor Mayra Rodriguez Valladares writes that overall, Americans are spending more to buy less, and getting into more precarious financial positions. Credit card balances stand at $1.25 trillion—up 63% from five years ago—and nearly three out of 10 buy now, pay later users say they’re using that financing to buy groceries. The personal saving rate is down to 2.6%—down from close to 5% in January.

As AI use expands, the way we measure business success could hide consumer pain. Forbes’ Brandon Kochkodin writes that as AI allows companies to potentially do the same work with fewer people, unemployment could increase—and businesses do even better. Economists say that at the very least, this means people need to stop thinking about economic conditions through textbook-era models. And yes, AI could bring both high corporate profits and high unemployment—but it could also have an impact on profits and jobs similar to that of other technological revolutions, including automated manufacturing, computers in the workplace and the internet.

It’s official: 2026 will be the year of the mega-IPO. This week, AI powerhouse Anthropic confidentially filed initial paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public late this year. The filing........

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