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ARTICLE · 27 JULY 2026

The Force Multiplier: What CFOs Are Actually Doing With AI

Foley & Lardner LLP
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After 25 years advising companies from garage to public markets, a Silicon Valley deal lawyer shares insights from a recent CFO Executive Forum where finance leaders discussed AI as a force multiplier. The gathering revealed the gap between AI adoption claims and actual transformation, with practical lessons on data normalization, agent governance, and what boards are really benchmarking when they evaluate CFO sophistication.

United StatesStrategy
Louis Lehot
Louis Lehot
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After 25 years advising companies from the garage to the public markets, I have learned to pay attention when a room of CFOs stops being polite. That happened on Tuesday, July 22, at our Foley office in Palo Alto, where we hosted the latest gathering of the CFO Executive Forum. The room stayed full past closing time.

The topic was the one every finance leader hears in every board meeting this year: AI as a force multiplier. How do you scale a lean finance team without adding headcount? We wanted the operator version, not the keynote version. As a deal lawyer, I had my own reason to listen closely. Claims about AI adoption now show up in fundraising decks, diligence requests, and purchase agreements. What gets said on a panel in July gets tested in a data room by December.

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