New AlphaSense CFO Samantha Greenberg told CFO Dive that she spends at least 10 hours per week outside of work learning and improving her AI skills. Greenberg officially assumed the role of top financial executive at the AI-driven market intelligence platform in April of this year, according to a press release at the time.

Those 10 hours encompass various formats, including attending workshops, reading research materials, and hands-on practice with technology. She said, "Making sure I'm staying on top of all the latest developments, understanding how AI is used for internal productivity, business strategy, and how to run a truly AI-native finance organization."

The New CFO Profile

Greenberg's 10-hour weekly practice stems from her thinking about how financial leaders can continue to grow and refine their skills as new technology disrupts finance and business models. She noted, "The profile of a CFO in the AI era has changed dramatically compared to the skills required of a CFO at a SaaS company just a few years ago."

Greenberg has 25 years of experience in the tech industry. Before joining New York-based AlphaSense, she served as CFO of identity verification company ID.me for three years, according to her LinkedIn profile, with that tenure ending last month.

She founded and served as Chief Investment Officer of Margate Capital Management, which was the third-largest woman-managed hedge fund before being acquired by Citadel in 2019. After that, Greenberg served as a portfolio manager at Citadel covering technology, telecom, and media. In that role, she honed a "lasting passion" for the intersection of data science and forecasting. After leaving Citadel, she served as CFO of hospitality technology company Mint House.

According to the press release, as CFO of AlphaSense, Greenberg aims to channel her passion for data into leading the company's capital markets strategy and financial operations as the company continues its rapid expansion.

Greenberg said she is committed to ensuring the finance team acquires new skills. She believes that finance is essentially an organization that serves teams such as product, engineering, and market strategy. Acquiring new capabilities helps ensure "we stay at the forefront of the skills needed to best support those functions."

Greenberg's thinking on enhancing AI capabilities is consistent with her style as a financial leader. "I consider myself very hands-on, more of a player-coach rather than just a coach," she said. "I like doing things myself, not just directing."

For example, she maintains close communication with the AlphaSense finance team, ensuring that whenever a report or analysis is submitted, she sits down with the relevant function "to make sure I understand every line of it." She said that diving deep into the data is crucial for uncovering insights that drive revenue and profit and add value to the organization.

Sustaining Rapid Growth

Mastering AI skills is not only part of Greenberg's personal career development, but also part of how she thinks about sustaining the growth pace of this AI-driven market intelligence platform.

Greenberg describes herself as a seven-year "power user" of the AlphaSense platform, having deployed it in her previous CFO roles. During her tenure at ID.me, she used the platform to the point where "it became a product our team couldn't live without."

Amid the AI boom, demand for the company has surged. According to a press release at the time, the company announced in October that its annual recurring revenue had exceeded $500 million. The company is valued at $4 billion (according to Reuters reporting after the latest funding round in June 2024), and due to rising demand, announced plans in an April 7 press release to further expand into Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East markets.

However, expansion also comes with challenges. "The challenge with any business growing quickly is that if you're doubling every two years, or even every 18 to 24 months, then you have a brand-new company every two years," Greenberg said.

Overcoming this challenge requires finding a balance between innovation and sustainability in areas such as capital allocation. She noted that you can't spend all your time on sustaining existing products or innovation that only drives incremental profits: "That's fine, but you'll get overtaken by competitors."

"Conversely, if 90% of R&D funding and effort goes into disruptive innovation while neglecting important sustaining investments, such as features that could become table stakes... you'll also miss valuable market opportunities," she said.

Similarly, when examining growth, focusing on the right metrics is crucial. For a company like AlphaSense with low customer churn and users who "scale with you," the goal is to continue investing in areas that consistently create value, "but fortunately, there are metrics that provide a lot of information about whether growth is efficient, which is equally critical," she said.

"Although growth is more important than profitability, growth efficiency is also an important perspective," she added.