🚀 Claude Code quickstart guide + Brex's $5B exit story | The AI CFO

One month of 2026 in the books and there's already been a year's worth of updates in the AI x Finance space.

We've seen Claude learn how to use Excel, a top FinTech startup get acquired for $5B, freefalling prices in the public/crypto markets, and several major fundraising announcements from agentic accounting startups.

Lots to cover in this week's newsletter - let's get into it!

💡 Claude Code for Non-Technical People: Quickstart Guide

It feels like Claude Code has exploded over the past month. If you're one of the many people that have been thinking about building with it but have no idea where to start, here's where to begin.

I put together a guide that walks you through the entire setup process - what to install, why you need it, and how to get everything running. Takes less than an hour, and by the end you'll have Claude Code writing code for you.

(Bonus: I also built a one-command script that automates the whole thing for Mac users)

Read the full article on LinkedIn

🫀 The Ecosystem Pulse

(Podcast) Run The Numbers: Zombie companies, ARR, and broken SaaS economics

Brett Queener, Managing Director of Bonfire Ventures (an airCFO partner!), draws great parallels between today's competitive landscape and the early 2000s shift from on-prem to cloud. Brett had a front-row seat to this era as an early exec at Salesforce, and gives some great insights on what might happen to the SaaS industry.

(Article) Software is Dead... Again!

Revenue multiples for public SaaS companies hit a ten year low this week. Jamin Ball goes deep on what's driving this market reaction & whether it's justified. His take: the marginal cost of building software has cratered meaning legacy SaaS vendors will face a flood of new competition.

My take: Markets hate uncertainty, and uncertainty feels like it's at an all-time high right now. There's a big difference between declaring SaaS (the business model) as dead & saying that all SaaS companies are going to zero. Strong companies will be able to navigate the transition to this next era, and shares in many of those companies can be bought at a huge discount this week.

(Video) Inside Brex's $5.15B Capital One Acquisition

Pedro Franceschi gives us the inside scoop on the entire Brex story - from a $12B peak to resetting equity at $4B, to selling for $5.15B. The deal moved incredibly fast (term sheet on Dec 22, signed in early January), and Pedro frames it as a way to compress years of growth rather than an exit. With Capital One's resources behind them, Brex is shifting its sights from fintech competitors to JPMorgan and Amex.

🔦 Tool & Resource Spotlight

Claude in Excel

In a very exciting update, Anthropic opened up Claude in Excel to Pro subscribers. It's a sidebar that lives directly in Excel and can read your entire workbook, explain formulas with cell-level citations, debug errors, and update assumptions without breaking dependencies. This could be a gamechanger - I know I'm definitely going to be giving this one a try.

🤝 airCFO Content Connection

Funded: Jesse Robbins, Partner @ Heavybit

I had a lot of fun talking with Jesse in the latest Funded episode. Jesse always tells you exactly what he thinks, and this conversation was no exception. We talked through why market size kills deals before anything else matters, co-founder red flags and fundraising mistakes that sink your process.

The 2026 airCFO Tax Compliance Calendar

We can all agree that tax deadlines are no fun. But the only thing worse is missing them entirely. Our team put together a cheat sheet with every deadline you need to hit in 2026. Make sure you give it a read and bookmark it now so you're never scrambling at the last minute.

That's all for this edition of The AI CFO - we'll be back in your inbox soon with more musings on the future of AI-powered finance & operations. Please reply to this email directly with any feedback/suggestions/just to say hi!

Cheers,

Alex Wittenberg, CEO @ airCFO