CFO Survey: Doubling down on R&D, despite economic jitters

This is no easy time to be a CFO. With companies navigating geopolitical instability, inflation pressures, and shifting capital costs, finance leaders are under pressure to do more with less. But while CFOs are carefully balancing priorities, they haven’t skimped on innovation. Instead of pulling back, they’re leaning in — making strategic investments to build resilience and unlock long-term growth, according to our annual CFO survey, conducted in May 2025.

The investments are largely driven by AI, says Navneet Govil, SoftBank’s executive managing partner and CFO. 

“We are going through a major revolution as we march towards the era of artificial superintelligence,” Govil says. “AI is creating opportunities for founders to start new businesses and for existing businesses to unlock new markets, ideate and develop new products, and become more efficient.”

Here’s a closer look at how CFOs are thinking about investment, including those involving AI.

While 32% of respondents in our 2025 CFO survey say they plan to maintain current R&D spending levels, a full 50% are increasing their investment in the year ahead. For many, it’s about staying committed to a long-term vision.

“Because we are building a company for the next 10, 20, or 30 years, we can’t focus too much on the current economic climate,” says Maria Cazorla, executive director of finance at Creditas, a leading Brazilian fintech company. “Building that kind of sustainable business means you have to keep investing in R&D.”

A focus on ROI

That doesn’t mean handing out blank checks. At Creditas, projects are greenlit only if they meet strict return thresholds. “We only invest if a project has a projected IRR above 50%. That’s our mantra,” Cazorla says.

As far as where these R&D dollars are heading, 35% of CFOs say they are expanding into new product offerings, while 28% report aggressive investment in the development of existing products.

At Observe.AI, which makes contact center software, CFO Subhash Tibrewal says the company is doing both: building new offerings while continually improving its core platform. “Our vision isn’t to offer point solutions. We’re building an end-to-end, AI-agent customer service platform,” he says. “To do this, we have to continue improving and adding to our core offering.”

He adds that the nature of the company’s offering makes its investment case even stronger. “Because we help customers cut costs and drive ROI, our solutions are less vulnerable to budget cuts. This is the perfect time for us to double down on R&D.”

AI remains a key area of investment for companies across the SoftBank portfolio — and it’s beginning to deliver measurable returns. Thirty-one percent (31%) of CFOs say their internal AI investments have already paid for themselves. Another 22% expect positive ROI by the end of 2025.

“After several years of experimenting, companies are starting to see some value, but this is just the beginning,” says Feng Gu, a professor of accounting and law at the University of Buffalo School of Management. “With a sweeping tech innovation like AI, you have to keep innovating and spending. There’s always the next wave, new features and functionality to adopt, and the next frontier to conquer.”

Doing more with less

Creditas, for instance, is using AI to help accelerate software development, streamline its HR performance reviews, do dynamic pricing tests, and serve as co-pilots for customer service agents. Observe.AI is using it to analyze sales and support conversations in order to uncover patterns in customer behavior and then flag churn risk.

“We’re very impressed with this tool,” Tibrewal says. “It allowed our teams to operate at 1.5 to 2x capacity. People can do more with less.”

Finance departments are seeing similar productivity gains. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of CFOs say AI has helped reduce their manual processes and workflows. At Creditas, Cazorla says AI tools have automated the input of invoices and the calculation of taxes across Brazil’s 4,000+ municipalities, each of which has its own set of rules. This tax compliance alone, she says, has saved the finance team roughly fifty hours a month.

“That time is gold for us,” she says. “Our teams have more time to reflect on the numbers and do high-level analysis.”

More gains ahead

In total, 38% of CFOs say AI has reduced manual finance workloads by up to 10%, while 22% report reductions between 11% and 25%.

While the benefits are already materializing, most CFOs believe the real gains are still ahead. Many say they plan to expand AI use for data analytics (72%), process automation (72%), and financial forecasting (49%) in the months ahead.

“Our goal is to add a lot more down the road,” says Tibrewal. “These are still very early days for what AI can do.”

Govil says that embracing AI should become table stakes for all leaders: “Whether you are a CFO or any other C-suite executive, you should encourage your teams to experiment with, and embrace, AI tools.”

Explore the full survey results, segmented by region, sector, and stage, on Sōzō Pulse.