30 years of pattern recognition in PE-backed companies, M&A, and the CFO seat — distilled into public posts. Ranked by what Brad's audience engaged with most.
PE firms are searching for a Head of AI. They're looking at the wrong org chart. The calls are coming in consistently now. Private equity firms building out their AI capability, looking for someone to lead it across the portfolio. The profile they're describing is usually some version of a technologist with operating experience, or an operator with enough technical fluency to be dangerous. Nobody's calling the CFO. They should be. Here's what the Head of AI role actually requires at the portfo…
Blackstone just told you exactly what the PE-backed SaaS CFO job looks like in 2026. Most CFOs aren't listening. Blackstone's AI strategy got a lot of attention this week. The Anthropic joint venture. The $1 billion equity stake. The Palantir-style consulting model being built t…
The CFO in the Age of AI | #1 of 5 AI Proficiency Is Not a Skill. It’s a Standard. I have implemented more than 20 ERP systems. Fifteen Salesforce deployments. Ten data warehouses. Two billing platform overhauls. Every one of those implementations taught me the same lesson: t…
AI Won’t Replace Your CFO. Bad Data Will. I keep hearing the same framing in PE board rooms: AI is going to transform finance. And I agree. But the conversation almost always skips the part that determines whether that transformation actually happens. Data quality. AI doesn’t …
The CFO in the Age of AI A CFO’s Field Notes A LinkedIn Series by Brad Wolfe | wolfepacks.com Five posts. One argument. As a delve into AI and think about how to implement and leverage it I have realized how the CFO & Operating Partner need to adjust. AI is not replacing the…
Surviving the Upgrade The CFO role is being upgraded whether you participate or not. AI is eliminating entire layers of traditional finance work while simultaneously demanding new capabilities that most finance leaders haven’t developed yet. This series is about closing that gap…
Surviving the Upgrade The Governance Gap Two numbers. One problem. 87% of CFOs say AI will be extremely or very important to finance operations in 2026. 15% of organizations report being well or fully prepared to support it. That gap — 87% conviction, 15% readiness — is not a…
The CFO’s Build vs. Buy Decision on AI At some point in the last 18 months, almost every PE-backed company I’ve talked to has had a version of the same conversation: should we build our own AI capability, or buy what’s available in the market? For companies under $500M in reven…
THE CFO AS CHANGE AGENT Who Should Own AI Strategy? The Answer Is Structural, Not Political. Russell Reynolds and Harvard Business Review are asking the right question: which C-suite member should own AI? The answer being floated — split the decision-making, let the CIO, COO, …
$547 billion. That’s how much enterprise AI investment failed to deliver intended business value in 2025 alone. Not underperformed. Not disappointed. Failed. MIT studied 300 public AI deployments and found only 5% generated meaningful P&L impact. S&P Global found 42% of compani…
AI Without the Hype Enterprise AI is generating trillion-dollar headlines and 80% failure rates simultaneously. Something doesn’t add up. Post 1: The FOMO Trap — When Anxiety Replaces Strategy Post 2: Two Different Games — The Hyperscaler Bet vs. Your Reality Post 3: The P…
Amazon just made senior engineers the mandatory human-in-the-loop for all AI-generated code. After four Severity-1 incidents in a single week — including a six-hour retail site outage — Amazon issued a new rule: no AI-assisted code reaches production without senior engineer sign…
Brad Wolfe | Operational CFO Series AI Agents & The CFO — Who Governs What the Builders Are Building Everyone is talking about how to build with AI agents. Nobody is talking about who governs them. AMD is marketing "Agent Computers" — always-on devices that run AI agents full…
The voices that shape how I think about finance, leadership, M&A, and building great companies.
The Trump administration is planning to pour more than $38 billion into warehouses for mass immigrant detention. While some communities are starting to push back, one rural town has agreed to expand its detention facility. On today’s show, we visit a small town in Georgia to learn about the trade-offs of becoming a detention town. Related episodes: How well are ICE’s 12,000 new officers being trained? How ICE crackdowns are affecting the workforce For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Book tour and ticket info here.Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can’t even legally sell Greenland. And at a security conference in Munich over the weekend, U.S. lawmakers spent a lot of time trying to walk back some of President Trump’s recent threats to try to buy, or even take over, the territory. But whether Trump can or will or should try to control or purchase a territory that doesn’t want to be sold is not the interesting question. What is interesting is how we got to this moment. And, how we might gracefully get out of it. Greenland is valuable for its minerals and because of its physical location in the world. (It’s easy to keep an eye on other countries from Greenland).Our latest: How the U.S. dropped the ball on the rare earths race. And one way the U.S. gets strategic locations without threatening to buy or take over an entire territory.Further listening: - Is Greenland really an untapped land of riches?- Add to cart: GreenlandPre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift. / Subscribe to Planet Money+Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune. Fact-checking help from Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Kwesi Lee and Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.Music: Universal Music Production - "The Attraction,” “Carnivore,” and “Walls Come Out.” Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
The Department of Homeland Security says it has more than doubled the workforce of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Trump. Yet videos of immigration officers killing two U.S. citizens and using aggressive arrest tactics have left some politicians and community leaders rethinking the agency’s approach. On today’s show, law enforcement experts assess the training and culture at DHS. Related episodes: How ICE crackdowns are affecting the workforce For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
What if the AI you integrate into your organization isn't just about efficiency or creating digital assistants, but completely changes how you work? Longtime digital trend watcher Don Tapscott says the next wave of artificial intelligence is all about identic AI - where personalized agents don't just complete tasks, but understand your judgment and values and take actions on your behalf. He explains the technologies for this that already exist amid the rise of agents and bots, what it means for leaders and organizations, and the pitfalls to look out for. Tapscott is author of You to the Power of Two: Redefining Human Potential in the Age of Identic AI.
According to activists, Iran has killed over 7,000 people as part of a crackdown on protesters. Why did protests engulf Iran in the first place? A big contributor: Its flagging economy, which has been in a tailspin for years. It’s a tinderbox.Related episodes: Iran, protests, and sanctionsThe Lost PlaneFor sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Book tour event details and ticket info here.An iconic cartoon character liberated from copyright, journalism from the world of competitive spreadsheeting, a controversial piece of US currency. Each year the Planet Money team dedicates an episode to the things we simply love and think you, our audience, will also love.In this year’s Valentine’s Day episode:The Public Domain Day list from Jennifer Jenkins’ of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain and her colleagues. Jesse Dougherty’s article “Between the sheets at the college Excel Championship” which is behind a paywall. Here is Jesse’s substack. 404 Media’s excellent journalism on the tech that ICE is usingAn ode to the language of the penny, including songs like Pennies from Heaven. The only self-check out that doesn’t waste your time. And we made public domain Valentine’s cards. Download THE OFFICIAL Planet Money valentine here.Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift. / Subscribe to Planet Money+ Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Kenny Malone. It was produced by James Sneed with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, engineered by Cena Loffredo & Kwesi Lee, and edited by our executive producer Alex Goldmark.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
What if your customers aren't looking for better products and services, but for a way for themselves to become better? While the experience economy remains important, Strategic Horizons cofounder B. Joseph Pine II argues that it's not enough to acquire and retain customers in today's competitive environment. He sees the next wave in business as one focused on offering outcomes to customers - and that might even mean only getting paid when customers succeed. He shares how this model might actually reduce risk, what it means in a world of AI and mass personalization, and ways that companies can truly deliver on their promises. Pine is author of the book The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers to Achieve Their Aspirations.
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