Gustavo’s Corner: AI News for CFOs - #11
This edition captures AI’s rapid shift from innovation to large-scale execution. OpenAI is scaling infrastructure with historic funding, Burger King is embedding AI into frontline operations, Nous Research is advancing open-source personal agents, Perplexity is championing multi-model orchestration, and Anthropic is integrating AI directly into enterprise workflows.
OpenAI raised $110 billion in one of the largest private funding rounds in history, securing $50 billion from Amazon and $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, at a staggering $730 billion pre-money valuation. OpenAI structured the round around major infrastructure partnerships, expanding its AWS commitments while locking in large-scale Nvidia training and inference capacity tied to next-generation AI systems. OpenAI is also keeping the round open to additional investors, reinforcing its strategy to rapidly scale infrastructure and move frontier AI from advanced research into widespread, everyday global deployment.
Burger King is piloting an AI assistant called “Patty” in 500 restaurants, integrating it directly into employee headsets to support meal preparation and monitor customer interactions in real time. Burger King is powering the system with OpenAI technology, enabling Patty to detect phrases like “please” and “thank you,” and allowing managers to track friendliness metrics for performance coaching. Burger King plans to expand the broader BK Assistant platform across all U.S. locations by the end of 2026, while AI-powered drive-thru ordering remains limited to fewer than 100 stores during this early phase.
Nous Research released Hermes Agent, an open-source AI agent designed to become smarter over time as it runs on a user’s local machine. Nous Research built Hermes Agent to connect directly to messaging platforms and continuously improve, drawing comparisons to the widely discussed OpenClaw agent. Nous Research equipped Hermes Agent with more than 40 built-in tools and cross-platform functionality across Telegram, Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp, along with automated scheduling for daily reports, backups, and briefings. Nous Research is distributing the project under an MIT license with a one-line installation, positioning it as a highly accessible entry point into persistent personal AI agents.
Perplexity introduced Perplexity Computer, a system designed to orchestrate tasks across 19 different AI models by launching sandboxed sub-agents capable of browsing the web, writing code, connecting to applications, and executing complex multi-step workflows autonomously. Perplexity structured each task to run in an isolated environment, allowing multiple competing models to operate within a single workflow, while also giving users the option to manually assign specific models to specific tasks. Perplexity is positioning model flexibility as a strategic differentiator, reinforcing its consumption-based pricing approach and directly challenging single-model ecosystems in the rapidly expanding AI agent market.
Anthropic unveiled a new wave of Claude Cowork plugins built to manage workflows across human resources, investment banking, engineering, design, private equity, and other enterprise functions. Anthropic complemented these releases with connectors to platforms such as Google Workspace, DocuSign, FactSet, and WordPress, enabling Claude to pull enterprise context and data directly into the Cowork interface without disrupting workflows. Anthropic also introduced administrative controls that allow organizations to create private plugin marketplaces, customize templates, and deploy AI agents across departments, accelerating enterprise-wide adoption of AI-powered productivity.
Why this news is important to CFOs and their teams:
This news signals that AI is no longer a technology trend, it is becoming infrastructure. OpenAI’s massive capital raise underscores the scale of investment required to compete, raising questions around capital allocation, vendor concentration risk, and long-term infrastructure commitments.
At the operational level, Burger King’s pilot demonstrates how AI is moving into measurable workforce performance management, with implications for productivity metrics, labor optimization, and compliance oversight.
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/Gustavo
