Author: Art Ryan

For decades, finance teams have been branded as the “cost center” of the enterprise, a department primarily responsible for controlling budgets, approving expenses and delivering reports. “Go to the finance team to get your expenses approved, right? Or to check on your budget, and they say yes or no,” Emanuel Pleitez, head of finance at Finix, said during a discussion for the PYMNTS B2B Payments 2025 event series “B2B.AI: The Architecture of Intelligent Money Movement.” But that was then. Now, in an era defined by real-time data, global volatility and investor expectations, CFOs are reimagining their function as something far more ambitious: a driver of enterprise value.…

Is the B2B sales world ready for AI-powered platforms that act less like pieces of software and more like tireless, always-on members of the sales team? It might be. Artificial intelligence (AI) is writing a new thesis for the near future of B2B commerce. Buyers want to self-educate quickly, on their own terms, without being forced into a slow, generic funnel. Sellers want to spend more time closing, less time sorting. AI, as PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster put it, is quickly becoming the center of gravity for sales optimization and offers “an efficient way to organize the inbound sales funnel.”…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says his company is investing in Elon Musk’s xAI. The executive confirmed the chipmaker’s participation in xAI’s latest funding round in an interview with CNBC Wednesday (Oct. 8). An earlier report by Bloomberg News said that Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup is aiming to raise about $20 billion, with sources familiar with the matter telling the news outlet that Nvidia would contribute $2 billion. Huang told CNBC he’s “super excited” about the funding opportunity, adding that he wishes he could give the billionaire more money. “Almost everything that Elon is part of, you really want to be part of as well,” Huang…

Artificial intelligence (AI) entered the business world with a promise of speed and savings. It’s now showing up as a line item on the balance sheet and a backlog in IT. The World Economic Forum reports that CFOs are uncovering hidden costs beneath the promise of automation, while another analysis finds that CIOs are facing a growing tangle of systems that need to be managed, patched and paid for. The World Economic Forum reports that many AI deployments fall short because companies underestimate the less visible costs of implementation. Data preparation, system integration, retraining and governance often consume more resources than the initial software or cloud…

Artificial intelligence-related goods accounted for nearly half of the overall growth in world merchandise trade in the first half, the World Trade Organization said Tuesday (Oct. 7). While AI-related products account for 15% of global imports and exports, they made up 43% of global trade growth, the WTO said in its latest Global Trade Outlook and Statistics. The trade in these goods, which include semiconductors, servers, telecommunications equipment and about 100 other product lines, rose nearly 20% year over year to reach $1.92 trillion during the first half, according to the report. During the same period, trade in non-AI goods grew by less…

ClickHouse announced an extension of its Series C financing and related transactions to fuel the growth of its offerings in real-time analytics, data warehousing, observability, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company added several new investors, including Citi Ventures, along with continued participation from existing investors, it said in a Tuesday (Oct. 7) press release. “This extended Series C financing will accelerate our mission to empower organizations with lightning-fast analytics on massive datasets,” ClickHouse CEO Aaron Katz said in the release. “Our data platform gives customers the speed, flexibility and efficiency they need to tackle their most critical use cases at scale, helping them…

OpenAI has acquired artificial intelligence (AI)-powered personal finance app Roi. That’s according to an announcement from Roi co-founder/CEO Sujith Vishwajith last week in a post on social media platform X. “We started Roi 3 years ago to make investing accessible to everyone by building the most personalized financial experience. Along the way we realized personalization isn’t just the future of finance. It’s the future of software,” Vishwajith wrote. “This acquisition marks an incredible milestone for Roi, and we’re thrilled to continue building out our vision at OpenAI.” According to a report by TechCrunch, the word “we” here applies solely to the CEO, as sources tell that news outlet…

For two years, the enterprise story on artificial intelligence centered on testing whether chatbots, copilots and generative models could deliver measurable value. Now, the focus has shifted to execution. The week’s announcements from IBM, Oracle and Nvidia show that AI is becoming a foundation of the enterprise stack. IBM signaled that transition by announcing a partnership with Anthropic to embed the Claude family of large language models into its new AI-first software-development environment. The integration will bring Claude into IBM’s hybrid-cloud ecosystem, allowing developers to modernize code, automate testing, and deploy updates within tightly governed systems. The move matters because it addresses…

IBM has launched a partnership with artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic. The collaboration, announced Tuesday (Oct. 7), is designed to encourage development of enterprise-ready AI by infusing Anthropic’s Claude large language model (LLMs) into IBM’s software portfolio. The goal is “to deliver measurable productivity gains, while building security, governance, and cost controls directly into the lifecycle of software development,” IBM said in a news release. “Enterprises are looking for AI they can actually trust with their code, their data, and their day-to-day operations,” said Mike Krieger, Anthropic’s chief product officer. “Claude has become the go-to AI for developers at the world’s largest companies because of…

OpenAI has inked roughly $1 trillion in deals for computing power this year. That’s according to a report Tuesday (Oct. 7) by the Financial Times (FT), which notes that these agreements dwarf the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s revenues while raising questions about how it can honor those commitments. The report came one day after OpenAI forged a new agreement with chipmaker AMD, following similar deals with Nvidia, Oracle and CoreWeave, as the company seeks the computing power it projects it will need to power AI offerings such as ChatGPT. According to the FT, these deals would give OpenAI access to upwards of 20 gigawatts of computing capacity, around the equivalent of power…

B2B’s AI moment isn’t about shiny demos. It’s about turning the back office into a decision engine. And PYMNTS is set to track that journey with its month-long virtual event B2B.AI: The Architecture of Intelligent Money Movement. It’s a virtual program built for operators: CFOs, treasurers, product leads and platform builders who want the playbooks behind AI that have proven value in B2B. “The opportunity now with Gen AI is to take those specialized point solutions and models to general intelligence across the business,” says PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “There’s a contextual aspect and a reasoning aspect that Gen AI and agents…

As banks and financial institutions push to justify the billions invested in artificial intelligence (AI), one question defines the conversation: Where does AI create value? To answer that, Thomas H. Davenport looked beyond technology companies to the investors who treat efficiency as currency, private equity. In a new analysis published by MIT Sloan Management Review, Davenport says, “One important sign that AI has the potential to create value is the willingness of private equity firms to build AI capabilities into portfolio companies.” Along with his co-author Randy Bean, Davenport presents that private equity might be offering the clearest evidence of how AI delivers measurable returns.…

Elon Musk has reportedly tapped ex-Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong to serve as xAI’s CFO. That’s according to a report late Monday (Oct. 6) by the Financial Times (FT), which notes that this is the latest executive shake-up at the artificial intelligence (AI) company. According to the report, Armstrong advised Musk on his takeover of Twitter, since rebranded as X, and has become one of the billionaire’s key allies, including during his tenure with the Trump administration. Armstrong will oversee finances for xAI and X, several sources familiar with the matter told the FT. The two companies merged in March, and are valued at $113 billion. “xAI and X’s…

For decades, the competitive advantage in corporate finance rested on scale and speed. Moving money faster, managing liquidity at greater volumes, and executing transactions at lower cost were the name of the game. That equation is now shifting. As artificial intelligence moves from the back office to the core of decision-making, a new source of edge is emerging: AI’s ability to transform raw data into predictive insights. “There’s a continuous evolution and … dynamic disruption in finance that requires CFOs to harness data and AI to make finance more efficient, more effective and substantially more strategic,” Raj Seshadri, chief commercial payments officer…

A Global Stage for Intelligence, Innovation, and Impact The world’s most influential minds in artificial intelligence and technology are converging at GITEX GLOBAL 2025, the largest tech and startup event of its kind. Hosted in Dubai, this iconic gathering brings together the leaders shaping the next era of human progress — from AI giants like OpenAI and G42 to hardware pioneers like Cerebras Systems and data management innovators like Cohesity. GITEX GLOBAL isn’t just another tech expo — it’s a collision of power, ambition, and intelligence. Here, the most advanced ideas in AI, quantum computing, cloud, and cybersecurity converge under…

ChatGPT users can now chat with several third-party apps while in conversation with the chatbot. OpenAI announced this feature called Apps in ChatGPT, together with an Apps SDK for developers that enables them to build these kinds of apps, in a Monday (Oct. 6) press release. The first apps are now available to all logged-in ChatGPT users on Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans, except those in the European Union, according to the release. The pilot partners offering apps within ChatGPT are Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify and Zillow, per the release. Eleven more partners and their apps will be added later this year. “The magic of this new generation…

Billions are flowing into AI, but not where they used to. The largest funding rounds this week went to startups working on deployment, compute and pricing, the systems that determine whether AI can operate efficiently and profitably. The focus is shifting from invention to execution as investors look for what they can scale. Vercel raised $300 million dollars at a $9.3 billion valuation. The company runs a platform that helps developers deploy and manage web applications quickly without maintaining their own servers. As more firms build products that rely on dynamic data or AI, deployment has become a bottleneck. Vercel automates…

Personal styling service Stitch Fix has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered visualization tool. Stitch Fix Vision, announced Monday (Oct. 6), gives customers personalized imagery of their likeness in an array of shoppable outfit recommendations based on their style profile and the newest fashion trends. “When Stitch Fix launched nearly 15 years ago, we disrupted the retail market and today, we are rewriting the retail playbook once again with our latest suite of innovations, including Stitch Fix Vision,” Matt Baer, Stitch Fix CEO, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS. “We have billions of data points on our clients’ fit and style preferences, and we are using…

If the outpouring of thought leadership is any indication of the urgency with which companies are advancing agentic AI, we’re about to see a Q4 that will require popcorn. But thought leadership won’t pay the bills on their own. Use cases will. And this past week has seen some impressive use cases in the Prompt Economy. The article “What’s Reasonable to Expect from Agentic AI in Pharma?” published by Pharmaceutical Technology examines how agentic AI could transform pharmaceutical research and development. The author argues that pharma’s data-rich, process-heavy environment makes it a natural test bed for AI agents capable of reasoning, adapting, and…

OpenAI and iPhone designer Jony Ive’s artificial intelligence (AI) device has reportedly encountered some technical hiccups.  Ive and the high-profile AI startup are developing a palm-sized, screenless device that can take audio and visual cues from the physical environment and respond to users’ requests. But as the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday, sources familiar with their plans said OpenAI and Ive had yet to solve crucial problems that could hold back the device’s release. Among the obstacles are deciding on the device’s “personality,” privacy issues and budgeting for the computing power required to run OpenAI’s models on a mass consumer product. “Compute is another huge factor for the delay,” said one source close to Ive.…