Until 2025, HPE’s finance team lived by a Monday ritual: a 90‑minute operational review powered by a 100‑page PowerPoint and hundreds of hours of manual prep. That weekly effort held the company’s heartbeat but left little time to focus on what mattered most—making faster, smarter decisions. CFO Marie Myers decided to change that.

Partnering with Deloitte, HPE’s finance team built “Alfred,” an AI‑powered platform running on HPE’s Private Cloud AI infrastructure. Nicknamed after Batman’s trusted butler, HPE estimates Alfred has removed about 90% of the manual effort that once went into preparing the weekly review. It has cut HPE’s financial reporting cycle time by about 40% and processing costs by at least 25%.

But the real story isn’t the technology—it’s the transformation. Myers and Gustav van der Westhuizen, COO for finance and strategy, had to come up with ways to reskill HPE’s finance professionals—more than 3,000 strong. 

For Myers, Alfred is more than a tool; it’s a test case for the future of leadership. “Even though you have all these AI capabilities, you still have to have a human in the loop,” she says. You can read more about how HPE (No. 143 on the Fortune 500) is transforming finance in my new article. 

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Aurélien Nolf was appointed CFO of Navan (NASDAQ: NAVN), an AI-powered business travel and expense platform, effective March 2. Nolf has more than 20 years of international public company experience. He has served as the VP, head of FP&A and investor relations at Lyft. Prior to Lyft, he spent 15 years at Electronic Arts, serving in various finance leadership roles. He began his career in the public accounting and audit practice at PwC in Lyon, France.

Dylan Wolin was appointed CFO of AAR CORP. (NYSE: AIR), a provider of aviation services, effective February 23.  Wolin will rejoin AAR from Federal Signal Corporation, where he served as president of Elgin, Trackless, and Vactor, the company's primarily municipal-focused specialty vehicle businesses. Before joining AAR and Federal Signal, Wolin was a director in Boeing's Corporate Development group. Prior to Boeing, he served as a VP in Deutsche Bank's Global Industrials Group.

Big Deal

"Inside Employees’ Minds 2026: A workforce under pressure" is a new report by Mercer.  The findings highlight that U.S. employees are facing mounting pressures as they navigate economic uncertainty and rapid AI-driven changes. Many employees are feeling unsettled about job security and the future, which is leading them to renew their commitment to their current employers. 

For example, employees accept that AI is redefining their roles. However, what they want to see is the plan—role impacts by function, timing, and the safeguards that protect workloads as change rolls out, according to Mercer. Role‑to‑skill maps and realistic learning pathways are central to how employees evaluate whether to stay and grow, the research finds.

Going deeper

In January 2014, Demis Hassabis sold his AI company, DeepMind, to Google. Fast forward to today, he leads Google’s AI efforts, including its Gemini models, and is also CEO and cofounder of Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet company using AI to transform drug discovery.

In a new episode of Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry, Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell sat down with Hassabis at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss where he thinks the future of AI is headed. Read more and watch the vodcast here.

Overheard

"Experience alone used to be enough. Learn your craft. Do the work. Repeat. That world doesn’t exist anymore. Today, standing still isn’t neutral – it’s falling behind."

—Brent Saunders, chairman and CEO of Bausch + Lomb, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.