At the Fortune AIQ Summit on Oct. 1, I interviewed Ewout Steenbergen, EVP and CFO of Booking Holdings (No. 169 on the Fortune 500), which owns and operates several major online travel brands, including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, OpenTable, and Rentalcars.com.

Steenbergen described a future in which AI makes travel planning more seamless, personalized, and proactive. That could mean suggesting an indoor visit to the Louvre when rain threatens a Paris itinerary, automatically moving a restaurant reservation after a delayed flight, or recommending an activity based on a traveler’s preferences and open time.

The prize is not simply a better chatbot. It is what Booking calls a “connected trip”: an integrated experience that ties together flights, hotels, restaurants, rental cars, and activities. And, in doing so, potentially creates more loyalty, trust, and frequency of engagement.

From AI pilots to unit economics

For finance leaders, Steenbergen’s comments offered a practical framework for judging AI investments. His message: Move past isolated pilots, but keep a close eye on unit economics.

Booking spends roughly $8 billion to $9 billion annually on paid customer-acquisition channels, including search, social, and metasearch platforms, Steenbergen said. About one-third of its consumer traffic comes through paid channels, while the other two-thirds comes directly to its platforms. As consumers turn to more AI tools and agents for discovery, he sees greater channel diversification as potentially positive for Booking’s unit economics.

Early signals are encouraging. Customers using Booking’s AI tools are booking somewhat faster, converting at somewhat higher rates, and canceling less often, Steenbergen said, while cautioning that the data remains early stage.

I asked him how he’s measuring the financial return on investment when it comes to AI. “I think in this area there isn’t a perfect answer,” he said. He continued, “I even think that the hyperscalers that spend hundreds of billions on the development of their large language models, they don’t really know what is going to be the ROI,” Steenbergen said. “They have maybe some assumptions and some hypotheses, but the whole point is, you don’t want to fall behind.”

He argued that the biggest returns come not from layering AI onto existing processes, but from rebuilding processes end to end. In customer service, Booking has seen booking units grow at a high single-digit rate while total customer-service costs declined slightly, he said. Customer satisfaction increased at the same time, driving down average servicing cost per booking.

In engineering, the company’s roughly 9,000 technologists have used AI tools to increase the number of merge requests put into production by about 30%, Steenbergen said. Crucially, that figure reflects code that has been tested and cleared quality controls—not merely generated.

The CFO’s job, then, is to measure both sides of the ledger. Steenbergen said Booking monitors token and licensing costs and uses “effective model-cost routing,” reserving lower-cost or open-source models for simpler tasks and more expensive models for complex ones. One engineering metric combines human and AI costs: total IT cost per merge request.

That is the more mature AI-finance question. Not whether a model costs more in isolation, but whether it lowers the all-in cost of producing a valuable outcome.

Steenbergen is applying the technology personally, too. He has an “AI coach” and uses two AI agents: a “strategic thought partner” for board materials and strategic analysis, and a “critical equity research agent” to pressure-test earnings-call preparation.

Watch the full video of my interview with Steenbergen at the Fortune AIQ Summit here.

Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com

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Fortune 500 Power Moves

Cody Perdue was named interim CFO at Albertsons Companies (No. 57). Perdue succeeds Sharon McCollam, who previously announced plans to retire as president and CFO and will remain with the company in an advisory capacity through the end of the fiscal year on Feb. 27, 2027, to support the transition. Albertsons has begun a search for a permanent CFO. Perdue, who joined Albertsons in 2013, currently serves as SVP of treasury, investor relations, and risk management and will continue to oversee those functions in his interim role. He has also held positions including group VP of treasury and investor relations, as well as finance and accounting leadership roles. Before joining Albertsons, Perdue worked at Deloitte & Touche LLP.

The weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.

More notable moves

Raju Datla was appointed CFO of MobileX, a wireless mobile carrier. Datla joins from RedCloud Holdings, where he served as CFO. His prior roles include chief strategy officer at Tillman Fiber and CFO and co-founder of NxtGen Datacenter & Cloud Technologies. Earlier, he worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank, advising technology, media, and telecommunications clients. 

Angela Sweeney was appointed CFO of Zircon Corporation, a Silicon Valley-based maker of sensor-based electronic hand tools. Sweeney joins Zircon with more than 20 years of finance and operations experience across high-growth manufacturing and technology companies. Her background includes senior finance and operating roles at Poplar Homes, Astra, Engagor, and Venga Global, as well as advisory work with founders and executive teams. 

Big Deal

Cybersecurity is becoming a more consequential capital-allocation issue for CFOs as companies expand their use of AI. PwC’s 2027 Global Digital Trust Insights survey of 3,934 business and technology executives found that 84% of security and finance leaders expect cyber budgets to increase, up six percentage points from last year, with AI a top investment priority.

Yet half of security leaders say attacks targeting AI systems are among the threats their organizations are least prepared to address—ranking ahead of cloud-related threats, third-party breaches, and ransomware. The report also points to foundational resilience gaps: Companies, on average, have implemented only three of seven surveyed data-risk measures, and just 39% have fully formalized operational-continuity plans that specifically address cyber threats.

For finance leaders, realizing AI’s value will require funding the data protections, controls, talent, and continuity planning needed to contain financial and operational risk.

Going deeper

CFOs pursuing AI-led growth may face a tightening market for the talent needed to deliver it. CompTIA’s September analysis found that U.S. employers posted 272,040 new technology job openings, bringing active postings to 625,633—the highest level in more than three years and 22.4% above September 2025.

Demand for AI capabilities is especially pronounced: active job postings seeking AI skills rose by 32,327 from August to 349,821, up roughly 282% since May 2024. The figures suggest finance leaders will need to weigh the cost of recruiting specialized talent against reskilling existing teams, outsourcing work, and redesigning processes around AI.

Overheard

"There is nothing more valuable in hiring than a personal recommendation or a referral. It should be a reminder that growing and maintaining your professional network is a key part of your career. You need to be a person others would vouch for."

—Paddy Lambros, founder and CEO of AI recruiter Dex, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.