What happens when every statement, regulatory filing, and data point about your company becomes instantly queryable?

Just like everyone else, institutional investors are starting to use AI in their jobs. That means applying AI tools to comb through company documents and financials, find every discrepancy, and deepen their knowledge of your industry.

“I don’t know what happens in capital markets when your investors have the ability to truly understand and sort and scale everything you said, everything your peers have said, everything your customers, your suppliers [have said],” Brigham McNaughton, a partner at PwC, told CFO Brew. 

Overcoming human limitations. AI is good at pattern recognition and identifying where the pattern breaks. It could help investors find red flags a human eye could miss in the piles of data.

Lee Larson, an investor at VC firm Piva Capital, can “load in [a company’s] last few years of financials and understand how things have developed or where the red flags are, without my having to read through all of those financial statements and note it down myself,” he told CFO Brew.

AI research is also giving investors tools to go deep on technical industries and come armed with more specific, informed, and direct conversations and questions about the industry they’re invested in, Larson and McNaughton agreed. 

Keep reading.—JK

Just about every accounting software company, it seems, now touts its AI capabilities. Many make bold claims about automating workflows and freeing accountants to spend more time solving problems or working with clients, and a good number use the term “agents.”

But what are the folks who buy this software actually looking for—especially those who might not work for big firms or have the largest budgets? A survey by software review platform Capterra sheds some light on what accounting software purchasers want most in terms of AI.

Capterra surveyed 3,385 software buyers across a variety of sectors in 11 countries. 139 of the respondents were in the accounting industry, and of this group, around 72% were from businesses employing fewer than 250 people, Capterra Senior Analyst David Jani told CFO Brew.

Accounting software buyers are intensely interested in AI, the survey found. The vast majority (94%) said they were adopting AI, and 24% said they were doing so aggressively. And more than a third (36%) said that adding functionality such as AI is the top reason they were spending more this year, suggesting that the technology might be driving purchases.

Though agents are all the rage, accounting software buyers seem to need less flashy forms of AI.

Keep reading.—CV

Your organization’s been hit by a ransomware attack—who do you call first?

It can be difficult to know who to contact when your organization’s data is held for ransom, to the point where even experts disagree. Should the stakeholders know first? What about law enforcement, or threat-response professionals?

Do you have cyber insurance? A victim’s first call or email depends on whether or not they have cybersecurity insurance, according to Paul Caiazzo, Quorum Cyber’s chief threat officer. If they do, calling a broker is the first step.

Keep reading on IT Brew.—CN, EH

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• Lead Internal Auditor at FM
• Accounts Payable, Sr. Associate: High Volume Finance at Goodwin Recruiting
• Senior Financial Manager at Applied Research Associates, Inc.
• Senior Financial Analyst at WK Kellogg Co
• VP Program Finance, Space & Directed Energy Group at AeroVironment