Opinion
Israel's blind spot: The CFO is ready to buy, but is Israeli tech ready to sell?
"The AI-driven transformation of the CFO tech stack is creating a rare market opportunity," writes Erez Agmon, CEO of Vayu.
Israel became the legendary startup nation and transitioned to a scale-up nation, a true global tech leader, by combining deep technical innovation with a strong ability to execute on go-to-market. From cybersecurity to defense tech, adtech to agritech, Israeli founders have a well-earned reputation for going into any room or market and walking out with a deal.
Yet for all of their commercial instincts, there is one buyer Israeli startups have consistently overlooked, the Chief Financial Officer. That oversight is costly in the age of AI, where the CFO has become one of the most powerful and most motivated enterprise technology buyers responsible for solving one of the fastest-growing problems in software companies: revenue. Israeli tech has the tools to lead when it comes to CFO solutions; now it just needs the will to execute.
For a long time, the CFO represented a roadblock to dealmaking. Big sales required getting past the procurement and legal teams, which was already a challenge, but attempting to get the finance team's signoff is where things fell apart. CFOs have a long and well-deserved reputation for being cautious. Why deploy new tools when the stakes are so high, and a small misstep or two could result in serious repercussions for the company. Unlike sales or marketing leaders who were all about growth, CFOs often make incremental purchases, usually with well-established companies and avoid new, unproven upstarts - a solid choice for a predictable era. Today, however, CFOs are no longer just evaluating tools, but searching for a fix for fundamentally broken revenue systems that no longer work in the AI usage-based era.
The traditional CFO is a thing of the past, or at least, they're becoming less common. Over the last five years, things have changed substantially for finance leaders. They've had to deal with a lot of challenges, like the pandemic, supply chain issues, inflation, and now AI is changing the market. Because of all this, just doing financial planning the old way isn't enough anymore as the per-seat SaaS model shifts rapidly to AI-driven complex pricing based on usage.
A recent Gartner survey found that 59% of finance leaders reported using AI in their role, compared to only 37% in 2023. That's one of the biggest increases in AI adoption that Gartner has seen in any part of a business. Despite a recent slowdown in AI growth over the past year, the fact remains: The CFO is now a technology buyer who needs to make decisions fast.
Israel has already shown it can create for and sell to the CFO’s office. Tipalti automated accounts payable, Datarails brought financial planning and analysis into the AI era, and Papaya Global tackled the complex issue of global payroll. They all built companies worth hundreds of millions to billions, selling to CFOs, and they should be just the beginning of what could be a major category for Israel. The country has the technical expertise, a strong sales culture, and ambitious product goals. Now, we just need to focus more on the CFO's office as a key market and become a leader.
Nowadays, it's more important than ever for CFOs to be on top of things, as their role is increasing exponentially. Pricing and revenue, which used to be handled by sales, marketing, or revenue operations, are now becoming the CFO's responsibility. With AI changing the game, it's easier to predict demand, set prices in real time, and forecast revenue with precision.
The challenge is that most billing, metering, and revenue recognition systems were never designed for this level of complexity or speed. In our work, we consistently see gaps of 5-7% between usage and recognized revenue, creating a form of revenue leakage that often goes unnoticed until it becomes material. As a result, many companies are operating with growing gaps between usage, billing, and revenue recognition, leading to financial blind spots, delayed visibility, and increasing financial risk.
Dynamic pricing, once only used by airlines and hotels, is now being applied to seemingly every industry. If a B2B SaaS company can't price its products intelligently across different segments, locations, and contract types, it's leaving a lot of money on the table. That new pricing model is a fundamental, structural shift in how software companies operate and monetize.
Israel dominates cybersecurity and represents nearly half of the global spend, because it understands the CISO. Right now, the Israeli ecosystem can recreate that success with CFOs who are overlooked, in need of urgent solutions, and more open to new technology than ever before. Israel's tech ecosystem has all the tools it needs to dominate the market. The AI-driven transformation of the CFO tech stack is creating a rare market opportunity. It invites a new generation of companies to redefine how revenue is built, measured, and managed.
Erez Agmon is the CEO of Vayu, a finance-native consumption to revenue platform.
