From the looks of it, 2026 is going to be AI’s big year in the finance department. A new study from AI-powered procurement software company Tropic found that half of finance departments are currently piloting AI solutions, but 86% plan on using it in much fuller force by 2026. And they aren’t just doing it because of the competitive pressure from other companies embracing AI. Two-thirds said their top driver in AI adoption is its operational efficiency.

Most companies aren’t yet seeing the expected efficiency boost, but it’s slowly getting there. Just over half of companies say they’re only seeing a slight improvement in productivity from AI, though that may also be because they’re running smaller-scale pilot projects. And when asked what business-level outcomes finance leaders are seeing from AI, the most common answer—from 43%—was that there’s no measurable impact yet. However, the rest of the respondents are seeing positives, with 30% reporting cost savings and 20% reporting better forecasting and planning.

Nearly half of CFOs said that proven ROI could accelerate AI adoption. But they’re already moving budgets around to accommodate the new technology. More than three-quarters anticipate increased software spending on financial AI next year, with 24% expecting a significant increase in investment. They’re putting their faith and trust in ROI—which a well-thought-out deployment of AI can bring.

But high ROI is not a foregone conclusion: A recent study from BCG found that many finance departments target a 20% ROI, and the median reported was just 10%. BCG found that the key to realizing a better ROI was deploying AI with a broad focus on value, looking at how it can transform the entire department, and not just a few functions.

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ECONOMIC INDICATORS

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Though experts have been warning for months that Trump’s tariffs could undo economic progress to slow inflation, that hasn’t yet come through in the numbers. May’s consumer price index showed price increases of 2.4% compared to a year ago, and an increase of just 0.1% since April. It was lower than economists’ estimates, which were 2.5% year-over-year inflation, and 0.2% month-over-month. The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting begins today, and although both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have essentially demanded that the board use this information to lower interest rates, the consensus projection is they will not budge.

Forbes senior contributor Christian Weller writes that while the CPI report looks positive, there are troubling areas that could foreshadow larger problems in the coming months. Prescription drugs are seeing higher price increases—up 0.6% in May alone, after a 0.4% increase in April. Prices ticking upward could show the beginning of a trend of these items getting much more expensive, especially since many prescription drugs are imported. Prices for hospital services have increased 3.9% over the last 12 months, and that may keep going up as Republican lawmakers cut federal funds that many hospitals rely on. Insurance rates are also way up, Weller writes, with motor vehicle insurance up 7% in the last 12 months.

The tariffs are looming on the horizon—though Trump announced a deal with China last week that imposes a 55% tariff on Chinese imports, as well as relaxes controls on rare earth minerals and magnets crucial to developing advanced technology. On Thursday night, Trump said his administration was negotiating tariffs with 15 countries, and would be sending “take it or leave it” letters to all trading partners in the coming weeks with the U.S.’s final tariff offer. A new Quinnipiac University poll last week showed 57% of registered voters disapprove of the way Trump handles trade, writes Forbes senior contributor Stuart Anderson.

Trump’s final tariff declaration caused stock prices to drop on Friday morning, and they fell more sharply as the day continued as Israel attacked Iran, escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The nations continued strikes with no signs of a truce in the near future. However, the major indexes rebounded this week, even as tensions in the Middle East grew.

TAXES

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The auctioneer is now officially leading the IRS. Last week, senators voted 53-44 to confirm Billy Long as the next IRS commissioner, writes Forbes’ Kelly Phillips Erb. The vote was strictly along party lines, with all Republicans voting in favor and all Democrats voting no. Long, a former U.S. Representative from Missouri, was an auctioneer before his election to Congress and has been a longtime Trump ally. He has no formal tax and finance experience, and did not serve on any taxation committees while in Congress. After leaving Congress in 2023, he worked with businesses as a consultant to help them apply for and receive pandemic-era tax credits. Long’s confirmation brings some permanency to the head of the tax agency; since former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel resigned on January 20, there have been three acting commissioners. Long’s term ends November 12, 2027.

It remains to be seen what kinds of changes Long may bring to the IRS. However, small businesses are focusing on tax changes. Forbes’ Brandon Kochkodin writes that nearly a fifth of them ranked taxation as their biggest problem in May’s Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill extending Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts and adding in other tax breaks, but several aspects of the sweeping bill face opposition in the Senate. Reuters reports that several changes have been proposed by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee—though none of them seem to touch the corporate tax cuts.

STOCK MARKET NEWS

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As the markets are once again on an upswing, two big IPOs last week saw success in their debuts, a sign that could entice more companies to go public now. Digital bank Chime began trading on Thursday and saw its price pop 37% on its first day on the market, bringing its valuation to $16 billion, writes Forbes’ Jeff Kauflin. Chime, founded 13 years ago, caters to lower and middle-income consumers. It became popular by offering free checking accounts and debit cards with early access to paychecks, and requires customers to set up direct deposits to access several features, including small loans and secured credit cards. Chime makes the bulk of its revenue on interchange—the 1% to 2% fees merchants pay to accept debit and credit cards, though lending represents a significant future revenue opportunity. However, it’s risky: losses from lending, disputed charges and fraud represented 21% of its revenue in the most recent quarter.

The world’s largest meatpacker, Brazil’s JBS, saw its stock increase 5% as it made its long-awaited IPO on Friday, writes Forbes’ Chloe Sorvino. For years, the company had eyed a U.S. IPO, but a lengthy rap sheet of corruption charges, both at home in Brazil and in the United States, got in the way of SEC approval for the IPO. Until this year, there had been a bipartisan effort in Congress to block the company from listing on the NYSE, with support from senators including Republicans Josh Hawley of Missouri and John Barrasso of Wyoming, as well as Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. JBS received SEC approval for its listing two days after the Trump Administration’s new SEC chairman was sworn into office—and that campaign finance filings revealed JBS’s Pilgrim’s Pride was the highest donor to the Trump Inaugural Committee, giving $5 million. JBS is also listed on Brazil’s B3 stock exchange, where it’s been trading since June 9.

DEEP DIVE

The Boardroom Psyche: Corporate America’s Response To The Economic Landscape

Forbes

Earlier this month, a collection of business and financial titans gathered in New York City to discuss the most pressing financial, economic and market issues of the day at the 2025 Forbes Iconoclast Summit. Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips moderated a panel discussion looking at financial issues facing companies featuring Michal Katz, head of investment & corporate banking for Mizuho Americas; Alex Spiro, partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP; and Baroness Dambisa Moyo, member of the U.K. House of Lords and co-principal of Versaca, a family office.

This excerpt of the session has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. You can watch the entire session here.

Phillips: Dambisa, you talk so much about preparedness, and I know you’re so involved with boards. Your optimism in terms of the history of resiliency was so important to share with every one of us who may not have been through that before. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Moyo: The most important thing I can emphasize is that we’re always in an era of uncertainty. The distribution of outcomes may have changed. If you think about a normal distribution, the skew and the kurtosis have obviously been altered in the new challenges, whether it’s financial markets or geopolitics or macroeconomy. But from a board perspective, our responsibility is not only to mitigate risk, but also continue to find opportunities within which a board and organization can grow.

That hasn’t changed. When I look back in history, we’ve been in periods of pandemic, not just in 2020, but in 1918. We’ve been in periods of deglobalization, in the Progressive Era in the 1930s where the state grew and there was plenty of regulation. We’ve been in geopolitical warfare. I’ve been on the board of a company that’s been around for over 350 years. They were there during the Industrial Revolution. All the technological gains that were experienced then is something that’s in the DNA of corporations that have been around for several decades.

This is to say our job is not to navel gaze because of all the uncertainty that has emerged. It’s really to see through it, and to, of course, think about updating our processes and make sure financially and strategically and operationally the organizations are sound. But at the same time, we have to keep looking for opportunities to improve, deliberate, to think about margin increases, and also to invest in different regions or in different products.

Deals are getting done right now and there are winners. We saw winners out of the pandemic. Where do you find that optimism in this space?

Katz: I don’t think we’ve talked enough about some of the structural imperatives that I think should drive deal activity. We know that private equity has been sitting on the sidelines for the last couple of years during the era when interest rate environments creeped up and made the cost of financing incredibly taxing in terms of returns. There are about 29,000 to 30,000 captive portfolio companies sitting in private equity funds that have yet to be monetized, and 50% of them are at least four years or so in terms of the investment cycle. Those companies will need to get monetized and will need to trade.

There’s other dynamics on the venture side of things. A lot of deals got done during the 2021 timeframe, perhaps at valuations that these companies have not grown into just yet. During that period of time, their growth has slowed down. I wouldn’t call them fallen angels, but they’re no longer the type of companies that would attract the public company investors as potential IPO exit. Those are a great cohort of companies that could be potential for M&A activity.

Lastly, we’ve all talked about the regulatory environment over the last couple of years. The hurdle was incredibly high for companies seeking to put two companies together, as there was no visibility as to whether a transaction could actually get clearance and get to the finish line. The scrutiny has remained in effect, but we do have an administration and a regulatory body in place that is more willing to negotiate a settlement to allow these transactions to happen. So on the one hand you have the structural, the strategic imperatives, which is the industrial logic, why you want to grow, which areas you want to go to, like AI and geographic diversification. But on the other hand, there are structural imperatives that will help catalyze this activity, and that’s why I’m incredibly optimistic about the opportunity ahead of us to try to get some deals done.

How do you navigate the tariffs with your clients? How are you explaining to them that calmness, but also the innovation, that exists out there?

Spiro: If you’re dealing with a crisis or chaos—and there’s a lot of chaos out there right now—I think the number one rule is you don’t panic. The best CEOs, CFOs I know have been just methodically going over their books, their supply chain, how it impacts them mathematically and getting ready for what comes next.

I try to learn from the people that do pretty good in crises and do different things. You don’t have to agree with everything that they do, but Elon [Musk] likes to cut costs during a time like this because he thinks that then you’re most nimble coming out of it. You can always rehire, you can always rebuild and do that. Other people like Jeff [Bezos] say there’s so many things I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but what are the things I can be certain of? And he pours his energy and his brainpower into what he can be certain of.

COMINGS + GOINGS

Media conglomerate Paramount Global appointed Andrew Warren as executive vice president and interim chief financial officer. Warren is currently a strategic advisor to the CEO and former CFO of Discovery Communications, and he succeeds Naveen Chopra.

appointed as executive vice president and interim chief financial officer. Warren is currently a strategic advisor to the CEO and former CFO of Discovery Communications, and he succeeds Naveen Chopra. Online gaming platform Roblox hired Naveen Chopra as its new chief financial officer, effective June 30. In addition to Paramount, Chopra has worked in financial leadership at Amazon, Pandora, and TiVo, and he succeeds Michael Guthrie.

hired as its new chief financial officer, effective June 30. In addition to Paramount, Chopra has worked in financial leadership at Amazon, Pandora, and TiVo, and he succeeds Michael Guthrie. Restaurant chain Texas Roadhouse selected Keith Humpich to serve as interim chief financial officer. Humpich, who joined the company in 2005 and works as vice president of finance, succeeds Chris Monroe, who has left the company.

STRATEGIES + ADVICE

Yes, you want to beat your competitors, but paying attention to their every move isn’t the best way to do that. What you should be doing is focusing on your own company: Think big picture, play to your strengths and draw inspiration from outside places. Here’s how to do that and more.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a business leader: There’s always much more to learn. It’s beneficial to always do leadership training, which will exercise your critical thinking skills and help you be prepared for the future.

QUIZ

Forbes surveyed several billionaires about the one indulgence they found essential. What was the most common response?

A. Second homes

B. Private jets

C. Yachts

D. Prestige cars

See if you got the right answer here.