“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.”

Sheryl Estrada
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 piece titled, "Why the timing was right for Salesforce’s $8 billion acquisition of Informatica—and for the opportunities ahead."