Exclusive: Cfo.ai launches an agentic CFO for business founders
Artificial intelligence startup Runway Financial Inc. said today it has decided to pivot away from accounting software and rebrand itself as cfo.ai.
That decision marks the launch of its new flagship product, an AI agent called Ari that’s designed to act as a chief financial officer for startup founders and independent business owners. Ari is designed to ease the workload on busy founders, which it does by proactively monitoring their finances.
The move marks a significant pivot for the startup, which was founded in 2020 as an AI-native accounting software firm, primarily focused on automating financial planning and modeling. While the original platform aimed to make accounting easier, cfo.ai takes that concept much further, acting as an always-on virtual CFO that can deal with virtually all financial matters.
To get started, founders can simply integrate Ari with their current financial tools and customer relationship platforms, such as NetSuite, QuickBooks, Stripe, Salesforce or Snowflake. Once it’s up and running, Ari will build and maintain a complete model of the businesses’ financial health. Founders will then be able to communicate with it via Slack and ask it to perform virtually any finance-related task. For instance, they could ask it to forecast their cash flow or analyze a hiring plan to understand its impact. Because Ari is constantly monitoring key financial metrics such as recurring revenue, cash flow, churn, profit margins and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, it can quickly generate an accurate answer or forecast.
