Every year as we put together the agenda for The F Suite National Summit, we think about the big questions that have captured the attention of our community.
Whereas last year’s agenda revolved mainly around managing through the challenges of turbulent market conditions, this year has been all about AI. And more specifically, how to get a real return from AI internally while positioning for a raise or exit as investor expectations keep shifting.
The 2026 F Suite National Summit will help you navigate these questions. You’ll learn from a variety of speakers from the F Suite community, led by our CFO Co-Chairs:
Katie Royce (CFO, Altus Group)
Ritu Bahal (Former CFO, Cota)
Taylor Frankel (CFO, Prime Movers Lab)
Jorge Stevenson (CFO, Yuvo Health)
On October 20th and 21st, we’ll be in New York City to talk about AI and capital strategy both in the macro sense and in sessions specifically geared toward operating CFOs and fund CFOs.
AI and Capital Strategy Are Top Priorities for CFOs Heading into 2027
What is AI actually worth to the business? This is what CFOs have been tasked with figuring out. But you have to answer it on two fronts.
First, you need to understand the impact of AI within the finance function itself, where you own the spend. Second, you need to be ready to support an AI story for the business in front of investors because it’s a major factor in any raise or exit process right now.
Our mainstage discussions will focus on both sides of the equation:
AI strategy and ROI. As finance teams move from individual tools to agents that run whole workflows, the CFO owns the cost, the risk, and the results. That means budgeting and setting guardrails as spend scales. It also means treating security as the risk most likely to stall adoption and building a path from a first deliverable to an AI-native finance function.
Fundraising and capital strategy. The bar for raising and exiting keeps moving, whether AI is a company's core product or part of how it operates. CFOs preparing for 2027 need the metrics and reporting investors now expect to see. They also need an AI story that's credible without overselling what it delivers.
These topics are intertwined. The returns you can prove internally become the evidence behind your AI story. But because there’s no single right answer to any of these questions, learning from peers who are going through the same challenges is the best way to find paths forward.
Operating CFOs Are Balancing AI Spend, Tooling Decisions, and Exit Readiness
For operating CFOs, the big questions about AI and capital turn into concrete decisions about your budget, your tech stack, and what comes after growth. Our breakout sessions for operating CFOs are built around those decisions.
AI spend is usually the first pressure point. It's become its own line item, but most budgets weren't built to hold it. A few things make it especially hard to manage:
Usage swings from month to month
ROI is difficult to pin down
There are no real benchmarks to check against yet
Our AI budgeting workshop treats AI as a category you can manage like any other. The focus is on what to track, how to measure return, and where to set guardrails before cost outpaces value.
AI is also reshaping how you approach your finance tech stack. Vibe-coding, or building lightweight tools with AI coding assistants, now sits alongside building and buying as a real option. That makes this a good moment to compare notes on what peers are building in-house, what's still worth paying for, and which renewals to rethink.
Looking further ahead, many operating CFOs are preparing for what comes after growth. That could be an acquisition offer, a strategic sale, or simply staying ready for diligence. Hearing directly from a CFO who has led finance through an M&A event gives you a clearer picture of what went well and what to prepare for now.
The right answer to each of these decisions depends on where your company is today. That's why each breakout groups you with peers based on factors like revenue, company size, AI budget, and AI experience.
Fund CFOs Face Different Stakes on AI, Reporting, and Liquidity
Fund CFOs are working through the same questions about AI and capital. The data you manage and the limited partners (LPs) you answer to raise the stakes on both, and our fund CFO sessions are built around those differences.
On AI, you're facing two versions of the same question: what to spend on tools, and how far you can let AI touch fund data. Deal memos, LP capital accounts, and non-public portfolio company financials need far more care than a typical SaaS dataset. Most AI budget conversations skip past that entirely.
Our AI discussion for fund CFOs covers both sides. You'll hear benchmarks on what peer funds spend on their own tools and what they're telling portfolio companies. You'll also work through which uses are fair game and where guardrails belong before you approve the next tool.
Reporting raises its own set of tooling questions. Our small group discussion follows the full reporting stack:
Collecting and standardizing portfolio company data
Monitoring portfolio company performance
Structuring internal general partner (GP) reporting
Delivering reports to LPs
Peers will compare tools and workflows at each stage and talk through where the biggest bottlenecks and opportunities for automation are.
On the capital side, liquidity events are reshaping LP capital and reinvestment. Our liquidity engineering conversation covers secondary sales, IPO timing, and the tax mechanics behind them. It uses the SpaceX lockup and the expected OpenAI IPO as live case studies.
Each of these sessions is reserved for fund CFOs, so you're comparing notes with peers who manage the same kinds of data and LP relationships.
Join Us for the 2026 F Suite National Summit
The Summit is a chance to step away from year-end planning and compare notes with peers before your 2027 priorities are locked in. You'll leave with ideas you can put to work right away and relationships with CFOs who are working through the same decisions.
The day is built for connection outside the sessions too. Breakfast, lunch, networking breaks, and a closing reception give you time to make genuine connections with peers across the F Suite community. Pre-conference dinners the night before let you start those conversations early.
Here are the details:
Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2026, from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM
Pre-conference dinners: Tuesday, October 20, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM at restaurants in NYC close to The St. Regis
Location: The St. Regis New York, Two East 55th Street, New York, NY 10022
Members can register for the 2026 F Suite National Summit. If you're not yet a member, apply to join The F Suite. We'd love to see you there.