Most generative AI projects in finance fail. Here’s what it means for CFOs and their future hires. <\/p>\n
Mid-market finance chiefs aren\u2019t hiring like they used to. A Gartner survey<\/a> of more than 300 finance executives shows that while companies are pouring more money into artificial intelligence tools, the share of CFOs planning to expand headcount has fallen.<\/p>\n \u201cFour out of five were either freezing capacity or headcount or reducing capacity in their team,\u201d Alok Ajmera, chief executive officer at Prophix, told Global Finance in a phone interview.<\/p>\n While CEOs and boards pressure their teams to show productivity gains from generative AI, results have been uneven, Ajmera added.<\/p>\n The GenAI Reality Check<\/p>\n Another Gartner estimate shows that more than 90% of generative AI proof-of-concept projects in finance departments failed to generate incremental value<\/a>. This \u201cstaggering amount,\u201d Ajmera said, curdles AI enthusiasm into AI skepticism.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of projects from an AI perspective felt really good on paper, but have not actually materialized the value \u2026 in real life,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He attributed the shortfall to a mismatch between the technology and finance work itself. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a probabilistic exercise, this is a deterministic exercise,\u201d Ajmera said. \u201cYou can\u2019t be 99% accurate with your numbers. You have to be 100% accurate.\u201d CFOs remain comfortable using AI for reporting, commentary and analytics, he said, but \u201cextraordinarily uncomfortable\u201d letting it touch journal entries or adjust numbers directly.<\/p>\n Shifting Skills, not Mass Layoffs<\/p>\n Ajmera pushed back on warnings of mass AI-driven unemployment, including recent comments from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos<\/a>, saying \u201cthe Doomerism view has been overhyped.\u201d He pointed to software engineering \u2014 home to agentic coding<\/a>, the most monetized AI use case to date \u2014 as evidence. \u201cWe have hired more engineers in 2026 than we did in 2025,\u201d despite productivity tools making individual engineers more efficient, he said. <\/p>\n He predicted finance will see similar skill displacement rather than outright job losses. \u201cI would not be surprised in a couple of years if we start seeing finance operations engineers\u201d managing AI agents on staff. Slower hiring, Ajmera added, is not the same as letting people go.<\/p>\n Ajmera also described a broader consolidation trend, as companies unwind software sprawl built up earlier this decade. He cited a mid-market manufacturer in the Midwest whose cloud application count grew \u201cfrom five or six applications to 25 or 30\u201d before Prophix helped consolidate roughly nine or 10 of those tools onto a single platform.<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Ajmera said he expects more caution from CFOs. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of caution in the air,\u201d he said, predicting longer purchasing cycles and heavier scrutiny of technology spending amid broader economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most generative AI projects in finance fail. Here’s what it means for CFOs and their future hires. Mid-market…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,11344,60665,25,60666,870,3545,60667],"class_list":["post-119751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-in-finance","tag-alok-ajmera","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cfo-spending","tag-cfos","tag-gartner","tag-prophix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}