Salesforce, PayPal COFOs tout agentic AI potential: Trial Balance
The Trial Balance is CFO.com's weekly preview of stories, stats and events to help you prepare.
Part 1 — Salesforce COFO says she's using AI to prep for earnings calls. Plus, a third of finance chiefs are adopting an 'aggressive' approach to artificial intelligence.
Robots aren't drafting up 10-Qs, 10-Ks or any other SEC filings for PayPal or Salesforce quite yet, but both companies are apparently betting big on a future driven by artificial intelligence tools.
In a roundtable discussion with reporters on Thursday, finance chiefs from the two firms spoke glowingly of the business potential of agentic AI tools, that is, artificial intelligence programs designed to make decisions autonomously with little or no human intervention.
Jamie Miller, chief financial and operating officer at PayPal, emphasized that, for now, her team is using AI agents to produce first drafts of internal content. That includes things like 'executive-level materials, where it's really summarization of a strategy,' she told reporters.
'We have not yet done, at least to my knowledge, AI-generated 10-Ks,' she said. 'I think we'll work our way to some form of assistance on that. … Within finance itself, there are lots of opportunities to leverage AI, and we see a lot of that internally.'
Robin Washington, who started her role as Salesforce's first chief operating and financial officer four months ago, said that she personally uses AI tools to prepare for analyst questions and to better understand competition. 'We are very much using [AI] to astutely understand the landscape,' she said. Washington added that artificial intelligence has helped cut down her prep work for earnings calls to 'hours instead of days.'
Though the discussion was mostly sparse on other concrete use cases for rank-and-file employees, both finance chiefs maintained that AI tools are set to fundamentally change the workforce, eventually.
'My boss always says we're probably the last set of managers to just manage humans,' Washington said. 'We're going to have AIs autonomously working side-by-side helping us make decisions.'
In an email, Salesforce spokesman Tyler Ng said that the company's 'Agentforce for Sales' program 'helps reps spend more time selling by letting AI handle routine tasks like lead follow-up and outreach around the clock.'
'Recently, the AI agent analyzed over 7,800 unworked leads — accounts with no rep outreach or activity — to prioritize high-intent prospects, personalize messaging and book 50+ meetings, generating $460K in net-new pipeline in just three weeks,' he said. 'The real power comes from AI and humans working together: while AI handles repetitive tasks, reps focus on building relationships and closing deals.'
And while big-ticket AI investments have coincided with recent layoff plans at several companies, such as Microsoft, the finance heads of Salesforce and PayPal emphasized that the emerging technology will instead reinforce the need for human skills. Washington cited things like 'problem-solving, emotional intelligence and higher-level decision making.'
'AI brings the data directly to us, and it enhances our ability to … do the art of the possible,' she said.
For her part, Miller emphasized the continued need for 'curiosity, systems thinking, self-starting' among employees.
'I was in a board meeting last week, and someone joked, 'sounds like it's the revenge of the liberal arts grad, finally,'' she said.
The two leaders' roundtable discussion coincided with the release of new survey data from Salesforce measuring CFO sentiment on AI. In a survey of 261 global finance chiefs, the company found that about a third have adopted an "aggressive' approach to the emerging technology. Just 4% said they have a 'conservative' AI strategy, and the lion's share of respondents (63%) said they're taking a moderate approach.
Conducted in June in partnership with Morning Consult, the survey also found that respondents, on average, are allocating about a quarter of their existing AI budgets specifically to AI agents.
Meanwhile, 61% of the CFOs said that 'AI agents/digital labor' are 'critical' to competition. The company 'defines digital labor as a hybrid workforce where humans and autonomous AI agents work together to accomplish more than either could on their own,' spokesman Ng said. In addition, about a third of respondents said that artificial intelligence 'requires them to have a riskier mindset around technology investments.'
Part 2 — This week
Here's a list of important market events slated for the week ahead.
Monday, Aug. 11 — None scheduled.
Tuesday, Aug. 12
NFIB optimism index, July
Consumer price index, July
Core CPI, July
Monthly U.S. federal budget, July
Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid's speech
Wednesday, Aug. 13
Atlanta Fed President Bostic speaks
Thursday, Aug. 14
Initial jobless claims, Aug. 9
Producer price index, July
Core PPI, July
Richmond Fed President Barkin speaks
Friday, Aug. 15
U.S. retail sales, July
Empire State manufacturing survey, Aug.
Import price index, July
Industrial production, July
Business inventories, June
Consumer sentiment (preliminary), Aug.
Part 3 — Weekly listen: St. Louis Blues exec on Business of Sports podcast
Steve Chapman, EVP and chief revenue and marketing officer of professional ice hockey team the St. Louis Blues, talked to Business of Sports: Playmakers Beyond the Competition hosts Ken Dubinsky and Chris Roseman, to discuss his love of hockey, undergoing the process of changing the team's logo and jerseys and streaming's effect on sports media.
When discussing the switch to streaming, Chapman highlighted that it allows the team to bring the product directly to the fans, but it's not without challenges
'The challenge is the financial model is changing and and if anybody tells you that they know exactly what's going on, they're lying because they don't,' Chapman said. 'Everybody's trying to figure out how to build bridges to wherever it is that we're going to end up. And so that's what we're doing right now. I think that's what a lot of teams in professional [sports] are doing related to local regional sports networks,' Chapman said.
He continued: 'It is something that is at the forefront of what we're working on right now, but I've got to tell you, it's actually unbelievably interesting. It's unbelievably motivating to try to figure out how to take this to the next level because at the end of the day, you want to give the product to the fans.'
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