July 2025

The finance function is evolving fast. Whether it’s streamlining close processes or spotting anomalies before they become real problems, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a buzzword. It’s a real capability that businesses are expecting finance leaders to adopt.

And that expectation extends to the teams they lead.

Yet there’s one big challenge: most finance departments weren’t built for this shift. Talent shortages are already stretching departments thin, and many current employees lack the tools—or the training—to capitalize on what AI has to offer.

So how do you build a finance team that’s not only prepared for AI but empowered by it? Find out by joining us for our free webinar, Why Your Finance Team Needs an AI Strategy, Now, powered by Oracle NetSuite and Entrepreneur.

Dr. Jill Schiefelbein, AI strategist and host of the Humanize Automation podcast, will moderate a conversation with Rebeca Bichachi, CPA and Product Marketing Director for Oracle NetSuite. Together, they’ll walk through six specific strategies to build a finance department that’s truly future-ready.

From reevaluating your hiring criteria to eliminating unfulfilling tasks with smart automation, this session goes beyond theory and offers practical, scalable action steps. Attendees of this webinar will learn:

• Why “intentional experimentation” is your best on-ramp to AI integration
• How to expand your talent pool by looking outside traditional finance roles
• Ways to reskill current team members—without overwhelming them
• Where to deploy AI tools to free up time for strategic, high-impact work
• How to spot (and reward) your early adopters and AI champions
• What today’s “ideal candidate” for finance looks like—and why that definition is shifting fast

Whether you’re a CFO, controller, or finance leader at a growing business, this session will help you align your AI ambitions with your most valuable resource: your people.

The Why Your Finance Team Needs an AI Strategy, Now webinar will take place live on Thursday August 28 at 12 p.m. ET | 9 a.m. PT.

The $10 billion AI startup Thinking Machines Lab (TML), which was founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati in February, is paying its technical talent up to half a million dollars in salary, according to federal data obtained by Business Insider.

The federal filings, which show how much TML’s hires on H-1B visas were being paid, showed that the company paid three technical staffers $450,000 each, while a fourth received $500,000 in compensation. The figures were from the first quarter of this year and just included salary, not added sign-on bonuses and equity awards. The H-1B allows U.S. employers to hire non-U.S. residents to work in specialty occupations.

Related: Here’s How Much a Typical Salesforce Employee Makes in a Year

The compensation is more than some major players, including Murati’s former company, OpenAI, which reported paying an average salary of $292,115 to 29 technical employees. Anthropic, meanwhile, paid an average salary of $387,500 to 14 employees.

Murati spent six and a half years at OpenAI before stepping down as CTO in September.

TML has yet to launch any public-facing products, though the secretive startup raised $2 billion in seed funding last month at a $10 billion valuation. Its website says that the startup is working “to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable.”

^{TML CEO Mira Murati. Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP}

High salaries are just one tactic in Silicon Valley’s AI talent wars. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta was trying to poach OpenAI researchers with “giant” signing bonuses of “$100 million” and “even more than that” in compensation.

Related: Here’s How Much a Typical Google Employee Makes in a Year

In fact, six top OpenAI researchers have joined Meta in the past few weeks as part of its new superintelligence team. The group included Shuchao Bi, co-creator of ChatGPT voice mode, and Shengjia Zhao, who co-created ChatGPT and previously led synthetic data at OpenAI.

Still, according to a leaked memo sent by OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Mark Chen on Saturday to staff, the company isn’t “sitting idly by.” Top OpenAI leaders, including CEO Sam Altman, are “recalibrating” compensation and finding “creative ways” to reward talent, Chen noted.

When Danny Yeung sat down for dinner with soccer legend David Beckham, there was no agenda. No pitch deck. Just two guys talking health.

They met through a mutual friend in Hong Kong. Yeung, the CEO of Prenetics, a health tech company specializing in genomics and diagnostics, wanted to create a wellness brand rooted in science. Beckham wanted a product he could take every day without juggling a shelf full of pills.

That conversation led to the creation of IM8, a supplement powder designed to support energy, gut health, immunity, and focus. In five months, it has shipped more than 3 million servings to customers in 31 countries. The growth has been sizeable. In its first full quarter of sales, IM8 generated $5.7 million in revenue, helping Prenetics raise its full-year forecast to between $80 and $100 million.

Beckham’s endorsement helped, of course. But Yeung says the goal wasn’t just to put a famous face on the box. It was to create something the founder and the athlete would both want to use. Beckham takes the product daily. His kids take it. His parents do, too.

“If this product didn’t work, David wouldn’t use it—and neither would I,” Yeung says. “We built it for ourselves first. Everything else came after.”

Here’s what Yeung learned in building the company.

Lesson 1: Start with science

Yeung says the vast majority of supplement companies work backward—designing the brand first and then sourcing ingredients to fit a specific price point. “They lead with a logo and build the formula later,” he says. “That’s not how it should work.”

IM8 reversed the process. Before a single package was designed, the company spent over a year developing the formula with scientists and doctors, many of whom had never partnered with a supplement brand before.

“We approached it like a biotech company,” Yeung says. “We had real clinical trials, real data. No fluff.”

Related: The Supplement Business Has a Trust Problem. This Tech Startup Wants to Fix That.

Lesson 2: Transparency isn’t optional

With more than 200,000 supplements on the market and little federal oversight, many consumers are understandably skeptical. “You can sell dust and call it protein. That’s legal. That’s the reality,” says Yeung.

IM8 tries to counter that with full transparency. The formula includes over 90 ingredients, including CoQ10, prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. It’s NSF Certified for Sport. Lab test results are published online. And the company publicly names its manufacturing partner.

Lesson 3: Keep it simple

Beckham wanted fewer pills in his daily routine. The idea behind IM8’s Daily Ultimate Essentials was to simplify supplementation: one scoop, once a day, covering multiple health needs.

The brand has plans to expand, but only with a few highly vetted products per year. Yeung emphasizes quality over speed.

“We’re not a company that wants to launch 50 different products. We want to focus on doing a few things very well. If we don’t think something is best in class, we won’t do it.”

Yeung’s taking that same mindset to the business side. Prenetics is in active discussions with crypto industry veterans to integrate Bitcoin into its treasury strategy.

Related: Inside The New Era of Longevity Supplements

Lesson 4: A celebrity partner can’t fix a bad product

Yeung says too many founders look for celebrity partners to grab attention, not to build staying power. “I didn’t want to be just another celebrity brand. We’ve seen too many of those,” he says.

That’s why he didn’t pitch Beckham on a business. They met over dinner. Talked science. Swapped health routines. “It wasn’t a transaction,” Yeung says. “It was two people figuring out if they believed in the same thing.”

Yeung believes Beckham didn’t just join because of a business opportunity, but because he believed in the science.

He has been involved in the process, reviewing product iterations, offering feedback on packaging, and flagging early customer reactions.

Lesson 5: Trust has to be earned

You can put a famous face on your brand, but if it doesn’t work, you’re not going to last. “People know when something’s real,” he says. “You can’t fake that.”

Yeung calls IM8 a “trust product.” Customers are putting it in their bodies every day, and that responsibility shapes how the business operates.

The brand’s 12-week clinical study showed that 95% of participants reported feeling more energized. Customer retention is strong. And feedback, Yeung says, has been more meaningful than any marketing metric.

“If people are putting this in their bodies every day, you better get it right.”

Related: Trust Is a Business Metric Now. Here’s How Leaders Can Earn It.

Amazon Prime Day means different things to different people. To consumers, it’s a day (actually a few days) of savings with the world’s largest online retailer offering deals to the 200 million-plus consumers with Prime memberships. To retailers, it’s a daunting reminder of how challenging it is to compete with a juggernaut of that size.

But competing with Amazon is possible. Rather than a threat to ecommerce, I’ve found that Amazon Prime Day’s rising tide can be used to lift all ecommerce boats if you plan in advance and take a tactical approach. In 2023, the ecommerce industry as a whole saw a 6.1% boost in sales and a 52% increase in clicks during Amazon’s two-day event, showing that customers will spend anywhere if retailers can harness the wave of customers Amazon creates. Let’s take a look at some strategies you can use as a retailer to get the most out of Amazon Prime Day without feeling like a slave to the beast.

Related: This Is the Simple Marketing Hack Your Business Needs to Drive Sales All Year Long

1. Plan and prep early

As the old adage “The Law of the 7 Ps” states, proper prior preparation and planning prevent poor performance, and successful customer acquisition during Prime Day is no exception. Make sure you have sufficient inventory of the products your customers love. It’s also a good practice to assess your product inventory to create smart bundles. Small retailers can compete with Amazon by offering discounts on bundled products instead of trying to compete on an individual product basis.

Tiered offers are also a great way to get customers’ attention. Offering products at price points that give different benefits or features can attract customers who may otherwise overlook a single product. Microsoft does the “tiered” thing by offering MS Office Standard and the more feature-rich Office Professional.

On top of that, tiered discounts based on quantity or purchase amount can encourage larger orders. For example, a supplement company I worked with offers a “Buy two, get 10% off” as well as “Spend $100, get 15% off,” and other variations.

2. Run a parallel campaign or event

Amazon goes out of its way to lather up its customers for the excitement of Prime Day with regular contacts leading up to the event. There’s no reason you, as an online retailer, can’t do the same. Running email and SMS campaigns parallel to Amazon’s can let your customers know that there are more deals to be had than just Amazon’s. Campaigns can be focused on high-intent customers whose online behavior and prior purchases can indicate a tendency to purchase high-demand items. High-demand products can be identified by analyzing prior sales data.

Related: These 4 Quick Wins Can Boost Your Customer Count and Revenue

3. Launch and run a 1-2 week lead generation campaign

A great way to bring new customers into your sales funnel is by using a lead generation campaign. I can speak from personal experience about the effectiveness of these campaigns, which I’ve helped customers implement for many years through content marketing strategies. Quality content helps businesses capture contact information from targeted audiences, creating warm leads that can more easily be converted into customers.

By using up to four cadenced contact points over a couple of weeks through various channels — email, direct mail, SMS, website landing pages, etc. — you can move prospects through your sales funnel and keep them informed about your products, ultimately guiding them to where they can complete their purchase.

4. Create urgency using special offers/discounts

Using special offers has several benefits for an online retailer. First, it provides great flexibility as offers can be almost anything from discounts to promotional products to loyalty programs. Second, it allows retailers to creatively entice customers without necessarily having to offer massive discounts.

Some examples of specials can be as simple as offering discounts on the same day as Prime Day. You can also offer access to limited edition products available exclusively during Prime Day in lieu of discounts. Offering points redeemable at a future date or referral bonuses can also be used instead of discounts.

In order to access Prime Day savings, Amazon customers must first purchase a Prime membership. Online businesses can choose to take the same route by offering a savings membership to their customers, or take the opposite approach by advertising that their discounts require no membership.

Related: These 4 Traits Set Excellent Marketers Apart From Mediocre Ones. Here’s How to Make Sure You’re Hiring Them.

5. Maximize your reach

One thing I always recommend my clients do leading up to and during Prime Day is to harness the power of social media. For more than two decades, I’ve worked with businesses in this area, and the benefits are almost too numerous to mention. But here are some that can greatly help online retailers.

Promoting your business on social media leading up to Prime Day can increase your brand awareness during a time when there is a marked increase in online shopping. Social platforms make targeted advertising very easy and cost-effective. By responding to questions and using tools such as polls and surveys, social media lets businesses engage with customers directly.

6. Make the customer experience an excellent one

Amazon prides itself on what it refers to as “customer obsession.” That philosophy has driven their ability to deliver easy-to-find products, one-click purchases and super-fast delivery. Online retailers competing with Amazon can deliver an excellent experience for their customers by taking a similar approach.

Your website should have intuitive navigation, images that load quickly and display clearly on both desktop and mobile, and data that is easily searchable. I’ve worked a lot over the years with retailers and e-tailers on product descriptions. Product descriptions should be concise but detailed and the customer’s recommendations for purchases should be as personalized as possible, leveraging the customer’s purchase history to suggest items that have the most relevance.

The checkout process should be streamlined, allowing the customer to move quickly from shopping cart to checkout to order confirmation and summary with minimal hassle. Order fulfillment should be a combination of an adequate inventory that meets product demand, coupled with fast and reliable shipping. Finally, multiple channels should be available to assist customers with any issues that arise.

Related: Buying Prospect Data Seems Like an Easy Hack for Getting More Customers. But Is It the Right Move?

7. Encourage post-purchase engagement

An effort should be made to engage with customers after their purchase. This gives the retailer an opportunity to find out how their purchase experience was and keeps the customer engaged with your brand. This is where the information you collect during lead generation can help you. You can send customers SMS messages to their mobile phones, emails to their inboxes and special communications for occasions like birthdays or seasonal promotions.

Not just for Amazon anymore

Amazon Prime Day is an opportunity for online businesses to take advantage of increased consumer traffic and provide products and services to savings-conscious consumers. By staying engaged with your existing customers before, during and after the purchase, retailers can boost sales while strengthening their customer relationships. Generating qualified leads can inject new customers into your sales funnel.

NASA and Netflix are teaming up to bring NASA+ live programming, such as rocket launches, spacewalks, and live views of Earth from the International Space Station, to the streaming service’s audience, NASA announced in a press release Monday.

“The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 calls on us to share our story of space exploration with the broadest possible audience,” said Rebecca Sirmons, general manager of NASA+, in a statement. “Together, we’re committed to a Golden Age of Innovation and Exploration, inspiring new generations, right from the comfort of their couch or in the palm of their hand from their phone.”

Related: Netflix’s New Chapter Means Price Hikes and Record-High Subscriber Growth

Netflix reaches a global audience of more than 700 million people, the statement notes, which will help NASA reach a larger audience. The programming starts this summer.

Currently, NASA+ is available for free, with no ads, through the NASA app and on the agency’s website. It will remain available for non-Netflix customers, the statement says.

Related: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Is Laying Off 1,400 Employees: ‘No Easy Way to Communicate This’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 41, is reshaping the company’s AI efforts to focus on superintelligence, or AI that surpasses human intelligence.

In a memo to employees on Monday, released in full by CNBC, Zuckerberg announced that a new group called Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL, will house Meta’s AI initiatives going forward. Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old former CEO of AI training data startup Scale AI, will lead the group and assume the newly created role of Meta’s Chief AI Officer (Meta has a separate Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun).

Related: ‘I’ll Fight to Keep Every One of You’: OpenAI Responds to Meta Poaching Talent, Says It Is ‘Recalibrating’ Pay

In the memo, Zuckerberg called Wang the “most impressive founder of his generation” and said that former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman would “partner” with Wang to lead the MSL team. The new unit will encompass Meta’s existing teams that focus on developing AI models and AI products. It will also include Meta’s fundamental AI research (FAIR) team.

“As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” Zuckerberg wrote in the memo. “I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.”

Meta previously announced a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI earlier this month in exchange for a 49% stake and fresh talent from the startup, including Wang.

^{Alexandr Wang. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Zuckerberg also wrote that Meta would bring on 11 new hires for MSL, including researchers from competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The new team includes former Google DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun, OpenAI researchers Trapit Bansal and Hongyu Ren, and Anthropic software engineer Joel Pobar.

In the memo, Zuckerberg said that Meta’s vision for AI was “personal superintelligence for everyone” and that the company was going to start working on its next generation of AI models to debut “in the next year or so.”

^{Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Meta has a broad reach: Zuckerberg disclosed in May that the company’s AI is used by more than one billion monthly active users across its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The company is also investing heavily in AI, with plans to spend $60 billion to $65 billion this year alone on AI infrastructure.

Related: Meta Takes on ChatGPT By Releasing a Standalone AI App: ‘A Long Journey’

Meta also isn’t afraid to spend heavily on AI talent. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated earlier this month that Meta was offering “$100 million signing bonuses” and “more than that” in compensation to many OpenAI researchers in an effort to poach talent.

Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, refuted the claims last week in a leaked all-hands meeting, saying that Altman was “being dishonest” about the signing bonuses and compensation.

“Look, you guys, the market’s hot,” Bosworth said at the meeting. “It’s not that hot.”

Meta is the sixth most valuable company in the world, at press time, with a market cap of over $1.8 trillion.