“There’s a bit of fatigue from uncertainty right now,” Yuval Atsmon, CFO of McKinsey, told me when we met in Washington, D.C., to discuss how finance chiefs navigated 2025 and the impact of AI. He often hears some executives joke, “Can we just have something that has a precedent?”

Following President Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, Atsmon said significant uncertainty emerged around the new administration’s economic and geopolitical agenda. “If I look at the peak of uncertainty, what I was focused on as a CFO was: What are the things that I should be doing that would be helpful in any scenario?” Atsmon said. “The worst thing is inaction,” he added. Acting on what you can control builds resilience, he said.

Key questions included: How can you improve liquidity and operational efficiency? What costs can be delayed or eliminated? Which investments are essential, and which can be stopped?

While uncertainty often drives defensive moves, Atsmon noted the importance of reviewing long-standing strategies and seizing competitive opportunities. “I wouldn’t recommend anyone stop making AI investments at this moment,” he said, adding that some actions are still driven by inertia, not strategy.

“The other thing that I think is different in 2025 than it was over the last 100 years is that so much of resource allocation now happens through the technology function of the company,” Atsmon said.

Yet there’s still uncertainty about AI’s readiness to impact the bottom line. McKinsey already uses AI to handle up to 30% of its tasks—such as faster research and better summarization—but “you can’t really do a full strategic analysis yet,” he said. Timelines vary widely by company.

Atsmon pointed to new McKinsey research estimating profound changes in how work is done by 2030. People will need to reorganize how they create value or take on different activities. For CFOs, curiosity about technology is useful, but the core responsibility is enabling the organization to respond at the right pace—neither moving so fast that it creates financial strain nor so slowly that competitiveness erodes, he said.

For most organizations, he believes AI efforts should be “80% on productivity for growth and 20% on productivity for efficiency.” The biggest opportunity, he said, lies not in reducing headcount but in unlocking better uses of time.

Ultimately, leveraging AI requires a willingness to reimagine how work gets done. It is a cross-functional C-suite effort. “More than ever,” Atsmon said, “managing uncertainty—economic, geopolitical, and technological—comes down to planning for the best, but also preparing for the worst.”

SherylEstrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Jennifer DiRico was appointed EVP and CFO of PTC (Nasdaq: PTC), effective Jan. 1. DiRico succeeds Kristian Talvitie, who will continue to serve as CFO through Dec. 31. DiRico’s experience ranges from large-scale enterprise software organizations to high-growth technology companies. She currently serves as CFO of Commvault, a cyber resilience company. Before Commvault, DiRico spent several years at Toast in finance and operations leadership roles.

David Hastings was appointed CFO of Trevi Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRVI), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, effective Jan. 6. Hastings brings over 25 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, he was CFO at Arbutus from June 2018 until March 2025. Previously, he was SVP and CFO of Unilife from 2015 until 2017.  Prior to that, Hastings spent the majority of his career as CFO and EVP at Incyte. 

Big Deal

“Global Economic Outlook Q1 2026: AI Tailwinds Boost Otherwise Weak Growth” is an economic research report published by S&P Global Ratings. Some key takeaways from the report include that global growth is holding up better than expected into 2026, helped by AI-driven investment and exports, even as underlying demand stays relatively soft. Also, forecasts have been revised up in many countries, but policy uncertainty, labor markets, bond yields, and the risk that AI underdelivers on earnings all remain key threats to the outlook.

Going deeper

KPMG’s latest “M&A trends in financial services” report is a review of M&A in Q3 for each of the banking, capital markets, and insurance sectors, with the latest data and top deals, as well as an outlook for M&A.

“Momentum from the prior quarter, driven by regulatory rollback and private equity interest, persisted in the third quarter of 2025,” according to the report. “However, inflation, credit quality concerns, trade policy uncertainty, and geopolitical tensions posed significant challenges, requiring adept navigation.”

Overheard

“In the days after the acquisition was completed, I was asked during a media interview if good luck was a factor in bringing together these two tech industry stalwarts. Replace good luck with good timing, and the answer is a resounding, ‘Yes!'”

—Amit Walia, the CEO of Informatica, a Salesforce company, writes in a Fortune opinion piecetitled, “Why the timing was right for Salesforce’s $8 billion acquisition of Informatica—and for the opportunities ahead.”

Granted, it feels like it’s always been a crazy few weeks in AI. But this cycle has been especially notable: Reports that Sam Altman has declared a “code red” around improving ChatGPT have made waves, while Databricks is reportedly in talks to raise at a jaw-dropping $134 billion valuation. Anthropic is reportedly looking at a real-life IPO, and everyone’s always watching for news from perhaps the biggest ascent of the year: Cursor, the AI coding juggernaut that’s now valued at more than $29 billion. 

And today, Brainstorm AI starts, and so many of these key players will be with us live in San Francisco, including Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap, Cursor CEO Michael Truell, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, plus some starpower from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natasha Lyonne. 

If you’re attending the conference, come find me! I’ll realistically be the one running around in a bright pantsuit. And if you can’t make it, we’ll be livestreaming the show, too – tune in here.

See you soon,

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X:@agarfinks
Email:alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

– Antithesis, a Tysons Corner, Va.-based platform designed to validate that software works before it launches, raised $105 million in Series A funding. JaneStreet led the round and was joined by AmplifyVenturePartners, SparkCapital, and others.

– ParadigmHealth, a Columbus, Ohio-based clinical research platform, raised $78 million in Series B funding. ARCHVenturePartners led the round and was joined by DFJGrowth and existing investors.

– Oxzo, a Santiago, Chile-based provider of oxygenation services for aquaculture, raised $25 million in funding from S2GInvestments.

– Quanta, a San Francisco-based accounting platform, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Accel led the round and was joined by OperatorCollective, NavalRavikant, DesignerFund, and others.

– LizzyAI, a New York City-based AI-powered talent interviewing company, raised $5 million in seed funding. NEA led the round and was joined by Speedinvest and ZeroPrimeVentures. 

– PvX, a Singapore-based provider of user-acquisition financing for gaming companies, raised $4.7 million in a seed extension from Z Venture Capital, DrivebyDraftKings, and existing investors.

– Corma, a Paris, France-based developer of a copilot for AI teams, raised €3.5 million ($4.1 million) in seed funding. XTXVentures led the round and was joined by TuesdayCapital, KimaVentures, 50Partners, OlympeCapital, and angel investors.

Private Equity

– NITEOProducts, a portfolio company of HighlanderPartners, acquired Folexport, a Tualatin, Ore.-based manufacturer of carpet, fabric, and hard surface cleaning products. Financial terms were not disclosed.

At the core is a well-documented bias toward confidence over competence. Studies consistently show that people who speak decisively, project certainty, and take credit for wins—whether earned or not—are more likely to be perceived as leadership material. In ambiguous environments, boards and senior managers often mistake boldness for ability. As long as a leader can narrate failure convincingly—blaming market headwinds, legacy systems, or uncooperative teams—their upward momentum may continue.

Another driver is asymmetric accountability. Senior executives typically oversee vast, complex systems where outcomes are hard to tie directly to individual decisions. When results are good, credit flows upward. When results are bad, blame diffuses downward, and middle managers, project leads, and market conditions become convenient shock absorbers. This allows underperforming leaders to survive long enough to secure their next promotion.

Then there’s the mobility illusion. In many industries, frequent job changes are read as ambition and momentum rather than warning signs. An executive who leaves after short, uneven tenures can reframe each exit as a “growth opportunity” or a strategic pivot. Recruiters and boards, under pressure to fill top roles quickly, often rely on résumé signals, like brand-name firms, inflated titles, and elite networks, rather than deep performance audits.

Ironically, early visibility can also accelerate failure upward. High-profile roles magnify both success and failure, but they also increase name recognition. An executive who runs a troubled division at a global firm may preside over mediocre results, yet emerge with a reputation as a “big-company leader,” making them attractive for a CEO role elsewhere.

The reckoning usually comes only at the top. As CEO, the buffers disappear. There is no one left to blame, and performance is judged in the blunt language of earnings, stock price, profitability, or layoffs. The traits that once fueled ascent, such as overconfidence, risk-shifting, and narrative control, become liabilities under full scrutiny.

The central lesson for aspiring CEOs is that the very system that rewards confidence, visibility, and narrative control on the way up often masks weak execution until the top job strips those protections away. Future leaders who want to avoid “failing upward” must deliberately build careers grounded in verifiable results and direct ownership of outcomes because at the CEO level, there is no narrative strong enough to substitute for performance.

Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com

Smarter in seconds

Big biz buy-in. Anthropic is all in on ‘AI safety’—and that’s helping the $183 billion startup win over big business

Old guard upgrade. How the bank founded by Alexander Hamilton is transforming for the future of finance

Pressure test. Inside the Fortune 500 CEO pressure cooker: surviving is harder than ever and requires an ‘odd combination’ of traits

Rank racing. The one-upmanship driving CEOs

Leadership lesson

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei on when a startup gets too big to know all employees: “It’s an inevitable part of growth.”

News to know

Investors are questioning OpenAI’s profitability amid its massive spending while increasingly viewing Alphabet as the deeper-pocketed winner in the AI race. Fortune

Trump warned that Netflix’s $72 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery could face antitrust scrutiny, suggesting it would create an overly dominant force in streaming. Fortune

An etiquette camp is trying to help Silicon Valley shed its sloppy image by teaching tech elites how to dress and behave as their influence grows. WaPo

IBM is reportedly in advanced talks to buy data-infrastructure firm Confluent for about $11 billion, bolstering its AI data capabilities. WSJ

Even as women reach top roles in politics and business at record levels, public confidence in their leadership is stagnating or declining. Bloomberg

Terence “Bud” Crawford, the undefeated 38-year-old boxing champion, has earned more than $100 million and even turned Warren Buffett into a fan. Forbes

Big Tech leaders now warn that artificial intelligence is advancing to the point where it could begin replacing even CEOs, reshaping the very top of corporate leadership. WSJ