OpenAI CFO says AI will be just as important as spreadsheet tools in the finance sector

“Just as I would not have hired someone on the team who couldn’t use Excel, I don’t expect to approve hiring someone in finance today who doesn’t master tools like Codex,” Friar said, name-dropping the company’s generative coding agent, Codex, which is used for automating technical tasks and programming through text prompts.

Friar argued that tools like Codex will become as critical to finance work as spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel have been.

According to OpenAI’s own findings, roughly 20 per cent of Codex users are knowledge workers, a demographic that is growing faster than other user groups.

Her comments closely followed a statement she released a fortnight ago, which said that financial services was one of the most rapidly growing areas of OpenAI.

“Financial services is one of the fastest-growing parts of our business at OpenAI, more than doubling our business thus far in Q2 versus all of Q1 and 3x-ing over Q4. Banks, insurers, asset managers, and payments companies are putting AI to work where it matters most: cyber, customer service, software, risk, controls, and decision-making,” Friar wrote on LinkedIn.

“Financial services power the global economy and run on trust, precision, speed, and scale. If AI delivers here, it’s a strong signal that it can become core infrastructure for the world’s most demanding enterprises.”

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OpenAI has been increasing its financial services footprint of late, having only last month launched an update to ChatGPT that allows users to use the tool for financial advice, provided they link their bank account.

OpenAI partnered with Plaid for the linking service and said the update will allow users to monitor spending and receive suggestions on how to save and invest.

“Now you can securely connect your financial accounts, see a dashboard of where your money is going, and ask ChatGPT questions grounded in your financial context – all while staying in control of your data. We’re starting with a preview to a smaller group so we can learn from real-world use, improve the experience, and expand thoughtfully,” OpenAI said.

While OpenAI has said the service is secure, with “financial memories” able to be deleted and accounts disconnected, experts have suggested that the service still comes with risks, which include revealing personal details and habits, enticing account theft by threat actors, and the lack of confirmation that the banking data will not be used for commercial purposes.

Additionally, Plaid only recently disclosed a cyber attack that occurred over a year prior to disclosure.

The incident, which occurred in December 2024, was only recently discovered in April 2026. The disclosure on the Maine Attorney General’s website found that the incident impacted 294 people, with the only description of the breach being “inadvertent disclosure”.

In a letter to those impacted, Plaid said it conducted an investigation, which determined the incident was not a cyber attack, but an internal technical issue related to phone number recycling.

“The company conducted a thorough investigation and determined the issue stemmed from a phone carrier practice called number ‘recycling’ – when a mobile carrier reassigns a disconnected phone number to a new person. The investigation identified that, in rare cases, this may have resulted in a mismatch of some Plaid accounts tied to those phone numbers,” the notice said.

“As a result, it was possible that certain profile information relating to the prior owner of the phone number may have been visible to the new owner.”