The IT Nerd

The debate is over. CFOs aren’t asking whether to adopt AI in finance anymore. They’re asking why every solution forces them to choose between speed they can’t audit and control that doesn’t scale.

A new research study from Wakefield Research surveyed 100 CFOs at mid-market U.S. companies ($50M-$500M revenue). Between 60 and 77 percent already plan to adopt AI depending on the use case. But the findings reveal a massive trust gap blocking execution.

The trust gap is real. 96% of CFOs say AI’s biggest benefit is freeing time for strategic work. But only 14% completely trust AI to deliver accurate accounting data on its own. And 97% say human oversight is critical. That’s not a contradiction – it’s CFOs defining the solution.

The findings reveal a market stuck between two broken models. AI copilots – whether standalone or embedded in legacy tools – still require accountants to review transaction by transaction, delivering single-digit productivity gains. AI agents – black-box LLM wrappers with finance branding – promise full automation but deliver unacceptable risk: no way to verify accuracy, no real audit trail, and low understanding of business context.

CFOs want neither babysitting nor black boxes. They want what they are calling “intelligent escalation” – AI that operates autonomously on routine transactions but knows when it’s encountering ambiguity and escalates with full context. One CFO put it simply: “We need an autopilot – fast, accurate and with the sound judgment of our most reliable accountant.”

The bottleneck isn’t AI intelligence – it’s AI judgment. As foundation models get smarter, the differentiator isn’t raw capability – it’s understanding business context, company policies, and when a decision requires human input. Speed and accuracy are table stakes. Judgment is what separates automation from intelligent escalation.

The study makes clear what finance leaders demand: speed, verifiable accuracy, full audit trails, and intelligent escalation – AI that earns the right to operate autonomously by demonstrating judgment about when to act and when to ask.

CFOs have drawn the line: AI that can’t show its work and doesn’t know when to escalate is unacceptable in finance.

Read the full report from Maximor here: Finance AI Adoption Benchmarking Report.

Finance leaders know they should be spending more time guiding business decisions, yet their teams spend most of their time shuffling data between systems and fixing spreadsheets. Maximor wants to change that. The company today announced a $9 million seed round to expand its finance automation platform — AI agents that plug into ERPs, payroll, billing, and bank systems to take on the repetitive accounting work and produce audit-ready outputs by default.

The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Gaia Ventures (founded by SAP’s former Chief Strategy Officer) and Boldcap. Notable angels include Aravind Srinivas (CEO of Perplexity), Tien Tzuo (CEO of Zuora), and CFOs/finance leaders from Ramp, Gusto, Opendoor, MongoDB, and the Big Four.

Finance leaders today face a paradox: they’re expected to steer strategy while their teams are buried in reconciliations, close checklists, and fragmented systems. The talent pipeline of accountants is also at a breaking point—three-quarters of accountants are expected to retire by 2030, while fewer graduates enter the field. That leaves companies stretched thin, raising the odds of costly errors and slowing down audits.

Across its customer base, Maximor has delivered three strategic outcomes: ~40% more team capacity, freeing finance staff to focus on strategy, not mechanics, Cleaner audits and streamlined closes, reducing compliance and valuation risk; and Unified, cross-silo visibility across existing finance & operational systems – so finance leaders can make faster, better-informed decisions with AI’s reasoning capabilities

Proptech business Rently, with global operations across three countries, cut its month-end close from 8 days to 4 within the first month of using Maximor, while avoiding two incremental accounting hires for repetitive work.  While, multi-billion-dollar AUM registered investment advisor business Invst was able to automate reconciliations, allocations, and reporting, unlocking advisor-level profitability insights that were previously impractical.

Maximor is not another point solution. It is a financial command center that connects both financial and operational systems—ERPs like NetSuite and Intacct, banks, payroll, CRMs, and SaaS data—into a single reconciled source of truth. 

On this unified data foundation, Maximor deploys specialized finance agents across revenue, cash, close, and reporting. Powered by its proprietary Audit-Ready Agent™ architecture, these agents generate workpapers, reviewer notes, and audit trails by default. The result: automation that is natively explainable, compliant, secure and enterprise-grade—tailored to the exacting needs of the CFO’s office.

Co-founders Ramnandan Krishnamurthy and Ajay Krishna Amudan saw the problem firsthand while leading Microsoft’s digital transformation group and working with global corporate finance teams: despite millions poured into ERPs and accounting tools, technical limitations forced critical workflows back into spreadsheets—creating endless manual work, slow closes, and costly errors.

Maximor’s design philosophy, “Design for Progress” reflects its commitment to helping finance leaders build financially progressive companies: outcome-assured automation adapted to each organization’s finance ops style, not a one-size-fits-all template.

Over the last two decades, financial software has over-promised and under-delivered, fragmenting workflows across point tools with no intelligence baked in. Unlike point tools that automate fragments, Maximor is the only platform built to automate finance processes end-to-end—”cradle to grave”—with enterprise-grade control. It uniquely combines a unified finance context layer with a specialized system of agents, powered by its  Audit-Ready Agent™ architecture – delivering CFOs automation with evidence, not just speed.

Maximor is expanding in three directions: Deeper automation across the breadth of repetitive accounting flows, Vertical modules tailored for specific sectors with high urgency to adopt; and Strategic finance insights that move teams from reactive reporting to proactive scenario planning and decision support. The vision: an always-on, audit-ready AI-powered finance team for every mid-market and enterprise company.