Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere except inside our tiny human brains, although that may not be off-limits, either.

The M&A landscape is no exception. The desire to have a piece of AI is driving M&A demand, and even evolving the dealmaking process itself, experts told CFO Brew.

Across industries, organizations are under pressure to transform through AI and boost both productivity and profitability, according to Josh Putnam, EY-Parthenon global and Americas corporate finance leader.

“C-suite execs learn that organic transformation is a time-consuming task, particularly when you're looking at technology, when you’re trying to stay ahead of trends, and when you’re trying to stay ahead of revenue growth and client pricing,” Putnam told CFO Brew.

Keep reading.—AZ

The adoption and implementation of AI is causing “a level of cost volatility that is disrupting budgets across the enterprise,” according to SaaS management firm Zylo in its 2026 SaaS Management Index.

Released in late January, the index analyzed more than 40 million SaaS licenses and $75 billion in spend under management, and identified a near 400% YoY spending jump on AI applications in companies with 10,000+ employees, even as organizations’ SaaS portfolios remained “stable at a glance.”

The index says that employees engaging in shadow AI practices “limited their team’s ability to manage the associated risks.” In plainer terms, they’re expensing more AI-native applications, like ChatGPT, instead of going through a more formal purchase review process.

It’s not as if this is a new phenomenon. A SaaS spending tracking platform in 2023 found that SaaS prices rose 12% YoY on average and that nearly three quarters of vendors had increased their prices that year. Last year, widespread subscription cost increases were seen across the enterprise SaaS market, according to CIO.

Keep reading.—DL

It’s not the worst kind of cheating scandal to hit an accounting firm, but it’s not great, either: KPMG Australia caught one of its senior leaders using artificial intelligence to answer questions in an AI training exam, the Australian Financial Review reported over the weekend.

KPMG forced the unnamed partner to retake the test, and fined them $7,000—a punishment that’s also known as every college professor’s fantasy.

Ironically, KPMG recently negotiated discounted fees from its own accountant, on the grounds that AI will make auditing—which KPMG does for many Fortune 500 companies—cheaper, the Financial Times reported. While that’s “not a crazy thing for most companies to think…it is a crazy thing for an auditing firm to say to its auditor,” Bloomberg’s Matt Levine wrote.

Zoom out: KPMG Australia said it has caught more than two dozen employees using AI to cheat on internal tests since July, fueling broader concerns about improper AI use at accounting firms. In the fall, another member of the Big Four, Deloitte, partially refunded the Australian government after giving them a report filled with AI-generated errors. It’s been a rough few months for AI down under.—ML for Morning Brew

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