Dive Brief:

• Private equity investors and their portfolio CFOs are not aligned when it comes to adoption of artificial intelligence technologies, a recent survey by financial consulting firm Accordion found.  
• While 98% of PE sponsors have asked their finance chiefs to prioritize AI adoption, CFOs have hung back, with 68% saying their reticence is “primarily because they don’t know where to begin or who to turn to for help,” the AI in the PE-Backed Finance Function survey found, according to an Aug. 11 press release.
• “Sponsors are under immense pressure to drive more value,” Accordion CEO Nick Leopard said in a statement included in the release. “They believe portfolio-wide AI adoption is critical to value creation. So, they are turning that pressure on CFOs. But the truth is, their portfolio CFOs are not acting, at least not as quickly as sponsors are demanding.”

Dive Insight:

The gap in AI adoption comes as portfolio CFOs and their PE sponsors are already facing critical misalignments when it comes to value creation, the AI-powered consultancy found in a July study.

Seventy-four percent of PE sponsors said their finance chiefs are not meeting their expectations, citing three reasons for underperformance, including failing to get exit-ready with urgency, challenges with finance fundamentals, and not prioritizing performance or value creation, according to the July study.

While both sponsors and CFOs identified value creation as a key area of focus for the latter half of the year, the July study also found some “concerning misalignment” regarding how to tackle that challenge: CFOs cited plans to hone in on more “forward-leaning value creation levers,” while sponsors highlighted a need to focus on “capturing lost value by streamlining FP&A workstreams like the month-end close process,” according to a press release on the July findings.

Sponsors remain focused on improving such processes, according to results from the August survey, which polled 200 private equity sponsors and 200 PE-backed CFOs. When it comes to adopting AI, 99% of PE sponsors said the most effective way for CFOs to do so is through “discrete, practical finance workstreams such as automated close, cash flow forecasting, and invoice-to-cash automation,” according to the press release.

Other studies have also pointed to A’s potential to improve productivity when integrated into certain aspects of the finance function; the technology can slash monthly financial close timing by approximately 7.5 days, according to a recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and Stanford University Business School.

While business leaders remain focused on AI’s potential, continuing macroeconomic pressures have led to caution on the part of both PE investors and CFOs. While 83% of sponsors want CFOs to invest in AI now — taking advantage of potentially longer hold periods due to tariff-induced uncertainty — 74% of CFOs said they believe their PE investors would prefer them to hold off on investments until that uncertainty has passed, Accordion’s study found.

Meanwhile, many investors have also remain wary of commitment as economic uncertainty continues. While there was significant book activity in this year’s second quarter, a large chunk of that activity didn’t translate to signings or deal commitments as “investors showed a preference to wait and see whether and how the tariff situation would shake out,” Big Four accounting firm KPMG said in its quarterly Pulse of Private Equity Q2 2025 report released in July.

During the second quarter, the U.S. saw $202 billion of proposed PE deployment across 1,608 deals, KPMG found, compared to proposed deployment of $264.5 billion across 2,039 deals in the prior quarter.