The global economy isn’t snapping back to an old equilibrium—it’s being rebuilt in real time with AI as prime catalyst. And CFOs are helping engineer change. That was a key message at CNBC’s recent CFO Council Summit in Washington, DC, where CFOs, policymakers, and investors tackled the challenges of rapid technological transformation in a volatile global economy.  

Amid the two-day summit, five themes stood out.

1. Macroeconomics and politics are now embedded in every financial decision

CFOs no longer treat geopolitics, elections, and debt ceilings as background noise. China exposure, India opportunity, shutdown politics, and US debt sustainability are now explicit inputs into capital allocation, portfolio strategy, liquidity planning, forecasting models, and day-to-day decision making. The question is no longer “What’s our macro view?” but “How do we accommodate a shifting regime in our base cases, scenarios, and risk limits?”

2. AI is both bubble and backbone—and firmly a CFO mandate

Like the early Internet, AI is a platform shift, even if parts of today’s valuation landscape prove frothy. There is a broad consensus that AI will change the world as the Internet did, likely even more profoundly and faster. CFOs see two key tasks ahead: funding durable AI foundations (data, cloud, cybersecurity, talent) and limiting speculative, low-ROI experimentation. Leading finance organizations are moving beyond pilots toward scaled AI use cases in forecasting, working capital, and risk, supported by governance that manages bias, compliance, and cyber exposure. Top challenges for CFOs include delivering a high return on AI investments, ensuring reliability of data outputs, and upskilling their talent. Participants agreed that AI must be deployed purposefully within finance, not sprinkled across random activities.

3. CFOs are stress testing resilience in the P&L and balance sheet

Despite gloomy headlines and macro and policy uncertainty, many CFOs still see a surprisingly resilient consumer, but with pronounced attitude differences by income, age, and category. At the same time, structural pressures from healthcare costs, higher interest rates for an extended period (although trending down), and potential Treasury market stress are forcing a rethink of cost structures and balance sheets. The emerging playbook: Segment demand with greater precision, treat large cost categories (including healthcare) as strategic, and pressure test capital structures for rate and liquidity shocks. Business cycles are accelerating, and that requires faster decisions and quicker adjustments.

4. Finance is on a path to becoming autonomous

Routine work is becoming largely automated, data is flowing reliably in real time, and the finance function is becoming an insight engine for the enterprise. AI is less effective as a standalone layer on top of legacy processes and fragmented data. To harness the full value of AI, leaders modernize their finance operations, simplifying processes, cleaning data, and shifting to an up-to-date IT architecture. CFOs are experimenting with copilots and agents, but they also are rethinking the foundations of finance. 

5. The CFO role is evolving from scorekeeper to architect of enterprise value

CFOs say finance is moving well beyond reporting, budgeting, and compliance. Finance teams now determine where and how their organizations create value. That includes setting the pace and guardrails for AI and technology investment, reallocating capital toward businesses and capabilities that will have the highest return on investment, and challenging the operating model on productivity, talent, and location decisions. In this model, finance is less a back-office function and more a cross-functional orchestrator partnering with business, technology, HR, and operations. Leading CFOs now translate macro volatility, policy shifts, and new tools like AI into smart choices on portfolio, cost, growth, and risk.

The bottom line

The CFO remit is expanding from steward and operator to macro strategist, AI investor, transformation architect, and enterprise integrator. Going forward, competitive advantage in finance will not come from having the “right” forecast; it will come from building finance organizations that can absorb volatility, scale AI responsibly, and convert faster, better decisions into durable value.