Normally it’s the holidays that sneak up on us, but this December, 2025 feels like it’s already here. Massive changes in store for taxes, tariffs, and regulations are pulling our minds forward like Jupiter’s gravity on a doomed little comet.

But let’s not hurtle forward without a little perspective on the year that was. Here are some of the biggest storylines of 2024 as we saw it at CFO Brew.

At any rate. Let’s get this one out of the way: We spent, perhaps, an inordinate share of 2024 hanging on the every word of Fed Chair Jay Powell and his fellow members of the Federal Open Market Committee, watching for hints about the magic moment when they’d cut the benchmark interest rate for the first time since March 2020.

The Fed took the plunge in September with a half-point cut that some members believed was too much juice. Its more modest quarter-point cut in November was announced the same week that Donald Trump won reelection. The returning president’s economic policies have enough inflationary potential that many expect the Fed to become even more cautious about future cuts.

Talent pool running dry. The accountant shortage remained top of mind in 2024, and there were even signs that it got worse.

Click here to keep reading about the biggest finance stories of the year.—GD

The last time we wrote a recap of the year in finance and accounting tech (2023’s version), it wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist (or member of the C-suite) to guess what it was about. Generative AI was the name of the game.

And when we polled CFOs about what tech trends they expected to see in 2024, everyone mentioned AI, but they were starting to see through the AI-hype glasses that fogged up in 2023.

“I hope that 2024 will get us beyond the current AI hype and closer to appropriate utilization of AI,” Ben Taylor, former CFO at Exscientia, told CFO Brew back in January 2024. “CFOs should be looking for areas where AI can optimize their operational goals.”

Proof of concept. CFOs were right about the changing tone of AI talk. In 2024, those two letters, AI, were greeted with three more: ROI.

By the end of 2024, it’s become clear that companies increasingly need to show proof of concept to justify their rampant AI spending. That narrative was building throughout the year, but it started to really crystallize in the final months of 2024, as tech power players investing heavily in AI reported stellar earnings while the market yawned.

“I think we’re getting to the point where AI enthusiasm and potential is not enough. These companies…are not quite delivering the growth that is priced into them,” Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird Private Wealth Management, told CNBC, in reference to tech companies like Microsoft and Meta.

For more on tech in 2024, click here.—NP