Match Group, which operates dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge, is tightening its approval process for artificial intelligence spending across the organization as it looks to maximize investment returns in the coming year, according to CFO Steve Bailey.
The new paradigm marks a significant departure from the company’s previous approach of expediting AI pilots and giving them a “more or less unlimited budget,” Bailey said in an interview last week.
“We’re putting a higher bar” on the process, he said. “I’m now requiring a business case with clear impacts either in the form of cost savings or efficiency gains before green-lighting any sort of material spend on AI tools.”
The new policy applies across the company, including Bailey’s team, which has launched various AI initiatives, he said.
“I think we’ve found some success in the area of tax. We’ve been able to automate through AI some of the more manual, repetitive data-collection processes,” he said, noting that AI is used to keep up with “value-added tax” rates that change across the 190 or so countries where the company operates, for example.
Beyond the tax front, AI is used by the investor relations team to comb through analyst reports and investor feedback.
“We’re not writing earnings reports with AI, which I think some companies have attempted to do — at least the first draft. But we’re using it [to analyze] a lot of the reports that have been written about our company. So, I think that’s been a win,” Bailey said.
Financial planning and analysis is an experimental area where Bailey sees significant promise. “But we’re probably still in the earliest innings of that,” he said.
CFOs are facing mounting pressure from boards and investors to deliver results from AI spending, while also navigating significant barriers, according to survey findings released in October by finance software maker OneStream.
Nearly all (97%) of the finance chiefs polled said their boards were expecting a regular readout on AI investment and progress, with cost savings (66%), return on investment (65%) and productivity gains (63%) reported as top metrics, the research found.
Meanwhile, limited AI talent, inconsistent data quality, and integration challenges continue to slow progress, “leaving CFOs striving to connect rising budgets with measurable business outcomes,” according to a press release on the study.
For its part, Match Group has until now sought to fast track AI projects in an effort to remain “on the cutting edge,” according to Bailey, who assumed his current role in March after serving in various finance leadership roles at the company.
“We’ve been pushing the teams to try a lot of tools, learn a lot, experiment and see what works,” he said.
The finance department this year has “basically green-lit any AI projects” without a business case to the tune of millions of dollars, Bailey said. “You just had to go through procurement and through a legal review and security review to get up and running,” he said.
Results so far have been mixed, with some of the biggest gains coming from AI-driven product enhancements.
In August, Match Group announced as part of its second quarter earnings report that a new AI feature added to Hinge has driven a 15% increase in user “matches and contact exchanges” since launching in March.
“For our business, that’s huge,” Bailey said. “That drives real revenue, real user impact, and we’ll do that all day long.”
He said AI has also been a major productivity booster for the engineering team, making the process of writing and editing software code much faster and easier.
By and large, however, the company hasn’t seen “a lot of real impact” from AI on the operational side, despite a lot of hype surrounding the technology, according to the finance leader.
“In 2026, what we’re saying is, there’s another step in the process now. You have to make a business case about the impact this tool will have on your department and the business overall — whether it be revenue growth, user impact, cost savings. And then the finance team will decide whether that ROI justifies the spend,” he said.
