Source: Fortune.com
Summary
Sarah Youngwood, EVP and CFO of Nasdaq, is embedding artificial intelligence (AI) across the company’s finance function. She has introduced a belt system to measure AI proficiency, aiming for 20% of the team to reach black belt status. Youngwood believes AI will revolutionize finance, enabling better real-time decision-making and improving forecasting, cash allocation, and invoice processing. She applies a financial lens to technology investment, measuring return on invested capital and allocating capital across time horizons. Nasdaq has focused on standardizing data definitions, centralizing information, and building dashboards to support advanced AI applications.
Our Reading
The numbers tell one story.
Nasdaq’s AI strategy is closely tied to its three-pillar strategy: architecting modern markets, powering the innovation economy, and building trust across the financial system. Youngwood’s belt system is a way to measure AI proficiency, with employees earning belts for hands-on delivery and teaching others. The company has made significant investments in AI, including a decade ago in cloud infrastructure and early AI capabilities. Today, Nasdaq uses AI across its function for administrative tasks, forecasting, and financial planning. Youngwood’s job is to make the financial case for AI investment, determining how aggressively the company invests and shaping the investor narrative around the results. The AI-first finance function is a deliberate signal of how tightly finance and tech are now linked.
It’s not just about the tech, it’s about the ROI.
Author: Evan Null
