Gustavo’s Corner: AI News for CFOs - #1
Introduction
Welcome to the first edition of Gustav’s Corner: AI News for CFOs, your quick scan of the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence that matter most to finance leaders curated by Gustavo
Porporato Daher. Each edition distills big developments from the tech world into practical insights you can use to anticipate change, guide strategy, and keep your organization future-ready.
Microsoft has introduced the Copilot AI directly into Excel, enabling users to perform generative tasks within spreadsheets. This new function, available to beta users, requires a $30/month Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription.
DeepSeek´s new V3.1 model, with 685 billion parameters, offers enhanced memory for longer,
coherent conversations. It rivals OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s flagship models, achieving a 71.6% score on the Aider coding benchmark at a significantly lower cost.
Google has launched Deep Think, its most advanced Gemini 2.5 model, to AI Ultra subscribers for $250/month. This model excels in speed and practicality, surpassing OpenAI’s o3 and xAI’s Grok 4 in key benchmarks.
OpenAI has introduced Study Mode in ChatGPT, designed to promote critical thinking by prompting students with questions. This feature is available to Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users, with Edu accounts coming soon.
OpenAI has also launched GPT-5, the first “unified” AI model that offers deep reasoning, faster responses, and fewer errors. The company is transitioning all users to this new model.
xAI CEO Elon Musk has proposed integrating ads directly into Grok’s responses, aiming to create a new revenue stream amidst rising AI costs.
Perplexity AI has made a $34.5 billion offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser, aiming to compete with giants like OpenAI and Google. The offer adds pressure on Google amidst regulatory scrutiny.
Why this news is important to CFOs and their teams:
AI innovation is accelerating at a pace finance leaders can’t afford to ignore. From Microsoft embedding Copilot directly into Excel, to Google and OpenAI unveiling their most advanced models yet, the tools CFOs rely on daily are being reimagined. These developments matter because they signal both opportunity and disruption. For CFOs, AI is no longer just an efficiency lever—it’s becoming a strategic capability. Whether it’s enhanced forecasting and scenario planning in spreadsheets, faster and more reliable decision support from advanced reasoning models, or new business models like Elon Musk’s proposal to embed ads in AI responses, finance leaders must be prepared to assess costs, risks, and competitive implications. Even bold moves like Perplexity’s bid for Chrome underscore how the AI landscape is reshaping industries at scale. For CFOs and their teams, staying informed and
adaptive in this fast-changing environment is essential to driving value, managing risk, and leading their organizations through transformation.
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