CFOs plan bigger AI bets

Chief financial officers are moving from approving artificial intelligence budgets to expanding them. Bain & Company said 42% of surveyed finance chiefs expect to raise AI investment by more than 30% within two years. (bain.com) Bain said the finding comes from a survey of more than 100 chief financial officers globally, released on April 13, 2026. The firm said 83% plan to increase enterprise-wide AI spending by more than 15% over the next two years. (bain.com) The shift is not just about companywide budgets. Bain said finance departments themselves are starting to claim a larger share of that spending as chief financial officers look for gains in forecasting, reporting, and other back-office work. (bain.com) Bain’s companion analysis said finance teams had been slower than other parts of large companies to adopt artificial intelligence, even as they signed off on spending elsewhere. The new survey points to a change inside the office of the chief financial officer, where the technology is now being treated as an operating tool rather than only a corporate line item. (bain.com) The spending push comes as finance leaders are still not uniformly happy with results. Bain said only 31% of surveyed chief financial officers are satisfied with the outcomes of their artificial intelligence investments so far, and many companies remain in pilot programs rather than broad rollouts. (finance.yahoo.com) That gap between spending plans and current satisfaction tracks with other 2026 finance surveys. Grant Thornton said 68% of 233 finance leaders in its first-quarter 2026 survey expected information technology and digital transformation costs to rise over the next year, the highest share in that survey’s 21-quarter history. (grantthornton.com) KPMG reported a similar pattern in its 2025-2026 Artificial Intelligence Quarterly Pulse Survey: 79% of leaders said AI would remain a top investment priority even with economic uncertainty, while 65% said scaling use cases and proving return on investment had become more difficult. (kpmg.com) Bain has also argued that the broader artificial intelligence buildout is getting more expensive. In September 2025, the firm said the industry would need about $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 to fund the computing capacity required to meet expected demand. (bain.com) For now, the April 13 survey suggests the budget debate inside large companies is shifting upward, not downward. Chief financial officers are planning larger artificial intelligence checks even before most say they are fully satisfied with the returns. (bain.com)