The CFO AI Digest: October 29, 2025

AI giants build finance-specific tools, connect AI to business context, and go deeper into agentic commerce and human-centered features. Plus, a new deal signals where financial automation is headed next.

Let’s get into it:

Anthropic

1. Claude for Financial Services adds Excel beta

Claude for Financial Services now includes a beta Excel add-on, real-time market intelligence through integrations with connectors such as Moody's, LSEG, and Aiera, and deeper private market insights with Chronograph and Egnyte. There are also six new Agent Skills for tasks such as DCF modeling, comparable company analysis, and coverage reports. Claude for Excel runs in a sidebar within Excel and can read and modify spreadsheets with full traceability. The data connectors and Agent Skills work across the Claude chatbot, Claude Code, and the API.

CFO insight: Anthropic is carving out a vertical strategy in contrast to Microsoft's horizontal one and doubling down on purpose-built AI. While tools like Copilot offer general-purpose AI across Office apps, Claude for Financial Services comes pre-built with finance-specific data sources. As an Applied AI team member explained, "Claude's capacity to write code has unintended consequences for a lot of other industries. Financial Services is the first one that truly makes sense. The problems are primarily logic-based and answers can be validated easily." If this gains traction, other AI giants might soon follow suit.

OpenAI

2. OpenAI restructures as for-profit corporation

OpenAI is now a public benefit corporation, a for-profit business designed to create public and social good. This is a shift from its previous hybrid nonprofit-for-profit structure. The nonprofit OpenAI Foundation holds a $130 billion stake in the new entity, making it the most valuable U.S. foundation. Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, maintains a ~27% stake worth $135 billion. As part of the restructuring, OpenAI renegotiated its Microsoft partnership. Microsoft retains exclusive access to all OpenAI technology to sell to customers through 2030, and will maintain access if and when OpenAI reaches AGI. SoftBank is investing $30 billion in the restructured entity, an amount that would’ve fallen to $20 billion if the restructuring wasn’t complete by year-end.

CFO insight: OpenAI eliminated the governance structure that limited its for-profit growth, driven by aggressive capital timelines. As the most prominent mission-driven AI company restructures for growth, smaller AI firms will likely face even greater pressure to follow as funding demands and competition intensify.

3. ChatGPT launches Company Knowledge

OpenAI introduced Company Knowledge for ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, and Edu users, enabling access to internal data from connected tools like Slack, SharePoint, Google Drive, and GitHub. Powered by GPT-5, the feature synthesizes information across sources and provides cited answers based on content the user is authorized to access. Users must manually enable Company Knowledge for each conversation, and the feature cannot run simultaneously with web browsing, image generation, or chart creation. Company data is not used for training by default, with encryption and admin-level access controls in place.

CFO insight: In another enterprise push, OpenAI is giving AI access to the company data it needs to deliver bigger impacts. The Head of ChatGPT wrote, "ChatGPT can help with almost any question, but the context you need to get work done often lives in your internal tools." Expect growing pressure to consolidate AI tools: why pay for multiple point solutions when one interface can pull from all your systems?

4. PayPal partners with OpenAI for in-ChatGPT checkout

PayPal is adopting OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open-source standard that allows merchants to list their products inside AI apps like ChatGPT. Starting in 2026, the integration of ACP with OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” will enable users to purchase products directly within ChatGPT using their PayPal wallets. PayPal will include buyer and seller protection and dispute resolution for these transactions. Merchants already using PayPal will have their products automatically made available in ChatGPT, beginning with categories such as fashion, beauty, home improvement, electronics, and apparel.

CFO insight: PayPal announced this deal the same day it raised earnings guidance, and shares jumped 9.8%. This signals that investors are hopeful agentic commerce will open new revenue channels even amid sluggish retail spend. A revenue leader at OpenAI noted that “this partnership reflects the next chapter of enterprise AI adoption." As fintech and AI giants build more partnerships, conversational interfaces could become increasingly transactional, with commerce happening where users are already talking to AI.

Microsoft

5. Copilot Fall Release adds human-centered AI features

Microsoft’s latest Copilot update added 12 new features focused on positioning the tool as a "human-centered" AI companion. “Social” features like Groups enable real-time collaboration for up to 32 people, with Copilot summarizing threads and splitting tasks. “Personalization” features include long-term memory to recall information across chats, a visual character called Mico that responds expressively via voice, and connectors that link OneDrive, Outlook, Gmail, and Google Drive. Finally, Copilot for health grounds responses in credible sources and helps find doctors, and Learn Live functions as a voice-enabled Socratic tutor.

CFO insight: A 2024 tweet from Microsoft AI's CEO noted that Copilot aims to deliver "a calmer, more helpful and supportive era of technology.” Now, as OpenAI responds to growing concern around AI, Copilot is moving closer to that vision in what appears to be a broader industry-wide attempt to humanize the tech. The question is whether users will buy into this framing. If the human-centered shift gains traction, it could accelerate enterprise adoption in functions where trust and judgment matter most, like finance, HR, and customer operations.

Deals to watch

6. Sequoia leads $750M valuation round for AI banking tool

Sequoia Capital is leading an investment in Rogo Technologies in a deal that would value the company at $750 million, according to Bloomberg. Founded in 2022 by former investment bankers from Lazard and JPMorgan, Rogo builds software that uses AI to create slide decks, draft IPO documents, and build financial models — tasks that typically consume junior bankers' 80-plus hour work weeks. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, Rogo integrates the full investment banking workflow into one specialized platform. Customers include Tiger Global, Lazard, and Moelis & Co.

CFO insight: Last week, OpenAI revealed its push to automate the grunt work of junior bankers. Sequoia’s bet on Rogo shows investors are buying into the same thesis: that AI can take on the high-cost, low-leverage work underpinning Wall Street. OpenAI may have made banker automation trendy, with Rogo’s funding signaling growing investor conviction in what could be the next frontier in financial automation.

Pommelli (on-brand content creation from Google Labs)
Mistral AI Studio (enterprise platform for testing and running AI workflows)

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