🚀 AI vs. Knowledge Work and the Future of Software | The AI CFO

"We're approaching the end of the exponential, and people don't seem to notice." It sure feels like the rate of change in AI is picking up, and it's unlikely to decelerate anytime soon.

IMO, the latest Claude release was the moment when AI truly made the leap into knowledge work. It's wild to think about, but I truly believe that in 2026, AI is going to do to all knowledge work what it did to coding in 2025.

When you first sit with this thought, it feels a bit terrifying, but I've found that the best way to move past that feeling is to learn to harness the power of these tools. From optimizing Claude Desktop workflows, to accelerating your learning, to full-on vibecoding, once you experience the leverage that AI can create you can begin making it work for you.

On to this week's context:

💡 Watching the Wall Crumble

On the afternoon of Friday, February 6th, I had a realization. I'd spent weeks building MEAN Machine, airCFO's first internal software product. It's a pipeline of AI prompts designed to produce CFO-level financial analysis. We were about to launch it with our team the following week.

Then I decided to test Opus 4.6 against it. It was able to produce a report that was 90% as good as MEAN Machine. With 1/100th of the scaffolding.

Until then, I'd assumed there was a pretty big gap between what these models could do and what a CFO actually does. That day, I watched it start to come down.

In this week's essay, I wanted to get honest about what happened, what it means for the future of knowledge work, and what I'm doing about it. Read the full essay on LinkedIn.

🫀 The Ecosystem Pulse

(Podcast) Bill Gurley, Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Bill Gurley recently transitioned out of VC, which is unfortunate for the industry because he is undoubtedly one of the most thoughtful investors of all time. He sat down with legendary producer Rick Rubin for a wide-ranging conversation on investing, craft, and career.

(Articles) AI Won't Make Legal Cheaper + AI Is Coming For Audit Fees

Two articles this week that are worth reading together. They present differing views on how quickly AI will actually disrupt professional services.

• Normal Tech argues that structural features of the legal profession will slow cost savings from ever reaching clients.
  
  
• OnlyCFO covers KPMG negotiating a 14% reduction in their own audit fees by arguing AI should be making their auditors more efficient.

What do you think: Is AI actually going to bring down the cost of professional services, or will the industry find a way to hold the line?

(Article) Build vs. Buy, Clouded Judgement

Interesting perspective on the question that everyone's asking: will vibe coding kill SaaS? Jamin argues that build vs. buy is a debate companies have always had, and the math rarely favors building in-house once you factor in maintenance, infrastructure, and diverted engineering time.

The bigger shift is that engineering velocity used to be the bottleneck, and AI is making that go away. It's crazy to imagine a world where there's 1000x more software, but that seems to be where we're heading.

🤝 airCFO Content Connection

Funded: John Glasgow, CEO & CFO @ Campfire

I had a great chat with John Glasgow in the latest Funded episode. John is a 10x CFO who ran point on Campfire's Series A and B while serving as their only solutions consultant, leading them to 6 straight quarters of 100% QoQ growth. Oh, and he's also the CEO. You can listen to the full episode to learn how he pulls it off.

LinkedIn: Clawdbot Gone Rogue

I dusted off an old MacBook Pro recently and installed Clawdbot with the goal to create an AI assistant I could delegate to via iMessage. Things went sideways pretty quickly. 💀 Clawdbot may be a glimpse into the future of agents, but in the present… it's a work in progress. Read what happened.

That's all for this edition of The AI CFO - we'll be back in your inbox soon with more musings on the future of AI-powered finance & operations. Please reply to this email directly with any feedback/suggestions/just to say hi!

Cheers,

Alex Wittenberg, CEO @ airCFO