CFO Intelligence Magazine – Fall 2025
Matt Konwiser
Cross Brand Technical Leader
and Field CTO at IBM
When we hear the words “AI Agent,” we don’t think about a human acting as a spy for AIs, nor do we conjure visions of a sentient robot acting autonomously for its own interests. In 2025, AI agent or agentic AI instead have become buzz-worthy as both the key to AI’s salvation in business use cases and a potential sign of demise for human labor. That’s why it’s important to understand what agentic AI is, in business terms.
How many assistants does the CEO or CFO of a large company have? There is always at least one, but usually a handful to a dozen close support people, each with their own tasks. And for each of those people, there is an army they invoke to gather data, schedule meetings, do business analysis, setup travel, and facilitate business critical actions
including mergers and acquisitions, press briefings, financial reporting, and more.
The CEO or CFO would fail at their job if not for everyone around them dutifully performing their tasks on demand. It’s all a well-oiled machine. If a request is fulfilled late or with bad data, the decision points or actions to be taken could be
wrong, which in turn impacts the brand reputation and (if public) stock price. Yet, even with these critical
co-dependencies, and with the massive support system the CEO or CFO has, if these key executives weren’t in place the rest of the network would fail. It’s the CEO and CFO, and their support crew, with their acumen, experience, and vision, that makes the rest of the system work.