Gartner Insights Abstract

3 Finance AI Investment and Spend Trends for CFOs

Published: 24 July 2024

Summary

CFOs beginning to plan how to invest in AI are faced with unrealistic expectations and vendor promises that make it difficult to form realistic investment assumptions. CFOs can use this research to check if their assumptions are correct and detect potential blind spots in their thinking.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • On an average, CFOs and senior finance leaders expect the year-over-year increase in AI budget allocation to outpace all other increases in budget, including areas like cost of goods sold, facilities and overall technology spend. Some of the year-over-year (YoY) increase can be attributed to the relatively low base of AI investments in preceding years. However, companies’ increasingly high expectations from recently-made-popular AI technologies, such as generative AI (GenAI), appear to have prompted jumps in investment.

  • Primary decision-making responsibilities for AI investments within the finance function overwhelmingly reside with the CFO. Their superior understanding of organizational priorities, command over

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Analysts:

Marco Steecker

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