OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar believes that, when it comes to AI, there’s a better way to measure value than focusing on model specifications, vendor promises, or cost per token. She suggests that CFOs and FP&A leaders instead track something far more fundamental: how much “useful intelligence per dollar” they’re getting from every AI deployment. In a blog post, she outlines four questions she uses as a scorecard for AI investments—a concise checklist that any finance team can adopt and apply to its own pilots and programs.

“The question I hear from CFOs everywhere is simple: how do we get more value from our AI spend?” she writes. Her questions aim to push leaders to define which work actually matters in their business, quantify the fully loaded cost when AI does that work, and test whether employees can reliably build on those outputs instead of redoing them. The goal: prove that the value of AI-completed work is compounding faster than the cost to produce it—or reallocate capital before hype turns into drag.

Finance leaders plan to devote even more money to AI. A recent Bain & Company survey found that 56% of senior finance executives are increasing enterprise-wide AI investment by more than 15% this year. Over the next two years, 83% of CFOs surveyed plan AI budget increases above 15%, with 42% expecting increases above 30%.

Yet results from early AI investments remain mixed. Just 31% of CFOs rated AI outcomes in finance as strongly positive. Finance chiefs are doubling down not because early returns have been spectacular, but because the gap between those who have scaled AI and those who haven’t is becoming too large to ignore, according to Bain.

CFOs are increasingly being tapped to steer AI value creation—many are still searching for a viable scorecard for what’s working.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Arun Kalra was promoted to CFO of PJT Partners Inc. (NYSE: PJT), effective Oct. 1. Kalra will succeed Helen Meates, who will step down as CFO after more than a decade in the role. Meates will stay on through year-end 2026. Kalra currently serves as director of finance at PJT Partners. He joined the company in 2016 as head of financial planning and analysis. Before joining PJT Partners, Kalra was a senior member of the compensation team at UBS. 

Kelly Kauffman was appointed CFO of Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. (AWG), effective July 20. Kauffman succeeds Gary Koch, who is retiring at the end of the year. Most recently, he served as SVP of financial planning and analysis at BJ’s Wholesale Club. Previously, Kauffman was VP of finance at Whole Foods Market, where he led global FP&A functions. Earlier in his career, Kauffman held progressive corporate finance and audit roles at EZCORP, Inc., Pamida, Cabela’s, Inc., Nestlé USA, and Grant Thornton, LLP. 

Big Deal

Small business profitability and hiring are finally showing signs of improvement, but Bank of America’s latest Small Business Checkpoint report finds that cost pressures and higher rates are still constraining growth and keeping capex plans subdued. 

Drawing on real-time account and payments data, the report finds profitability growth turning positive for the first time this year, even as revenues struggle to fully outpace rising input costs, and small firms continue to lean on price increases and borrowing to protect margins. For finance professionals, it offers a granular look at Main Street’s health—how small businesses are balancing profitability, hiring, and debt service in a higher-for-longer rate environment.

Going deeper

"How Apollo-owned Michaels turned two rivals’ bankruptcies into a growth strategy" is a Fortune article by Phil Wahba. 

Wahba writes: "When Party City and Joann Fabrics liquidated last year, Michaels Stores had an opportunity to swoop in and fill the void each retailer had left in the market. It jumped at the chance. In a matter of months, Michaels, an arts and crafts retailer, had built out party supply spaces at its 1,400 stores, set up a supply chain to source helium, installed balloon-filling equipment, and trained employees on how to use it." Read more here.

Overheard

"The KitKat campaign only worked because marketing had the standing to make a fast, unconventional call without waiting for a brief to move through layers of sign-off."

—Mélanie Brinbaum, Nestlé’s European head of marketing and consumer communications, told Fortune in an interview. After more than 400,000 KitKat bars had vanished while being transported from a Nestlé factory, Brinbaum and her team needed to become "super reactive" as the news began to spread. Nestlé’s statement on X read: “We’ve always encouraged people to have a break with KitKat. But it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 tons of our chocolate.” The post drew 393,000 likes overnight.