The right research helps a CFO explain what AI spend is producing, not just what it costs. This is our short list of the CFO research reports worth your time this year, what each one covers, and who should read it.

1. The CFO AI Leverage Report (Open Future Forum)

The CFO AI Leverage Report is Edition 1 of Open Future Forum's operator-research program for finance leaders. It is built on first-party survey data from 421 respondents gathered across seven Open Future Forum events, which gives it something most analyst reports lack: direct answers from executives in the room, not panel data collected at arm's length.

The report focuses on how finance leaders are actually buying AI. Where budget authority sits. Which categories are getting funded. Where CFOs see returns and where they see waste. It reads in one sitting and is written for operators, not analysts.

Who should read it: CFOs and finance leaders at venture-backed and PE-backed companies who want to benchmark their AI spend against peers, and vendors who sell into the office of the CFO.

Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley, founded in 2019, with 100 events to date. It runs Forum Select, invite-only private events for C-suite executives, and Forum Events, open panels and gatherings. The research program draws directly from those rooms.

2. Deloitte CFO Signals (Quarterly)

Deloitte's CFO Signals survey is the standard quarterly read on sentiment among finance chiefs at large North American companies. The 4Q25 edition surveyed 200 CFOs at companies with at least $1 billion in revenue and found confidence at its highest level since 2021. Half of respondents named digital transformation of finance as their top priority for the year, and 87 percent said AI will be very or extremely important to finance operations in 2026.

The most useful number in the report: 54 percent of CFOs said integrating AI agents into finance workflows is a top transformation priority for 2026. That single stat explains a lot of enterprise buying behavior this year.

Who should read it: anyone who needs a quarterly pulse on large-company finance sentiment, and anyone building a board deck that needs credible third-party numbers.

Where CFO Signals measures sentiment, Finance Trends measures maturity. The 2026 edition found that 63 percent of finance departments have deployed AI solutions, but only 21 percent of those believe the investments have delivered tangible value so far, and just 14 percent have fully integrated AI agents into the finance function.

That gap between deployment and value is the defining CFO problem of 2026. This report names it with data.

Who should read it: CFOs mid-transformation who want to know whether their results are normal, and CEOs who want to pressure-test what their finance team is telling them.

4. The Gartner CFO Report (Quarterly)

Gartner publishes The CFO Report each quarter as its free-access answer to the top challenges CFOs raise in analyst conversations. The Q2 2026 edition covers three questions: how to become a future-ready enterprise leader, how to build AI literacy across the finance team, and how to make finance data reliable enough to produce AI returns.

Gartner's related 2026 priorities survey of more than 200 CFOs is worth pairing with it. The headline finding: only 36 percent of CFOs feel confident driving value from AI, even as cost optimization and forecast accuracy top their priority lists. A separate Gartner survey from early 2026 found that acquiring and developing AI talent is now the single most challenging near-term priority for CFOs.

Who should read it: finance leaders who want a structured view of where their peers are stuck, without a client contract.

This one translates Deloitte's broader Tech Trends research into finance terms. It covers agentic AI in the enterprise, AI infrastructure and rising inference costs, AI-enabled robotics, and how CFOs should partner with IT to build an AI-native technology organization. The framing is practical: finance for finance, finance for the enterprise, and finance for the market.

Who should read it: CFOs who are being asked to fund technology decisions outside the finance function and want to ask sharper questions.

How to Use These Reports Together

Read them in this order. Start with the CFO AI Leverage Report for a ground-level view of how peers are buying and budgeting AI right now. Use CFO Signals and Finance Trends to benchmark sentiment and maturity at the large-cap level. Use Gartner to structure the talent and data questions. Use the Tech Trends guide when the conversation moves beyond finance.

The pattern across all five is consistent. AI budgets are real. Measured value is lagging. The CFOs pulling ahead are the ones treating AI as a portfolio to manage, with clear thresholds for what gets funded, what gets scaled, and what gets cut.

That is also the conversation happening inside Open Future Forum's CFO Executive Forum. If you are a finance leader and want to compare notes with peers off the record, openfutureforum.com is the place to start.

Read the CFO AI Leverage Report →

Open Future Forum is a private executive community in Silicon Valley founded in 2019, with 100 events to date across Forum Select private events and Forum Events open programming. Its research program, including the CFO AI Leverage Report and the Executive AI Leverage Report, is built on first-party survey data from executives attending Open Future Forum events.