In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, I’m joined by Ahikam Kaufman, Co-Founder and CEO of Safebooks.ai, a seasoned finance executive turned entrepreneur with deep experience across startups, public companies, and large-scale acquisitions.
We explore why finance has lagged behind other functions in digital transformation, how AI is fundamentally reshaping financial governance, and why the modern CFO is becoming a transformation leader, not just a financial steward.
This conversation goes beyond buzzwords and dives into real-world problems: broken audit trails, fragmented systems, compliance risk, and how AI agents can finally deliver real-time financial truth.
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👤 About the Guest
Ahikam Kaufman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Safebooks.ai.
He began his career in accounting, served as a CFO in Silicon Valley startups, experienced multiple acquisitions including by Hewlett-Packard and Intuit, and spent over a decade as an entrepreneur.
Today, Ahikam is focused on modernizing the Office of the CFO by applying AI to financial data governance, auditability, and compliance at scale.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahikam-kaufman-688310/
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🎯 Key Topics Covered
• Why finance was never designed for today’s data complexity
• The two biggest blind spots in modern financial organizations
• What “audit trail” really means and why it’s so hard to achieve
• How AI agents bridge structured system data and unstructured documents
• From quote to cash: tracing transactions across fragmented systems
• Why compliance failures are often data problems, not intent problems
• The evolving role of the CFO in the AI era
• Where humans still matter and where machines outperform
• Why AI makes regulation easier to meet, not harder
• Practical advice for founders building in finance and compliance
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🧠 Key Takeaways
• Finance teams deal with massive data but are not trained as data teams
• Fragmented systems create hidden compliance and cash-flow risks
• AI can monitor 100% of financial transactions, not just samples
• Real-time governance is now technically possible for the first time
• CFOs are becoming transformation leaders, not just scorekeepers
• The future of finance is continuous, automated, and exception-driven
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🎓 What You’ll Learn
• How AI changes financial accuracy from “material” to near-perfect
• Why most financial errors happen even when teams do “everything right”
• How AI reduces headcount pressure without removing human oversight
• What founders must understand before building in fintech or compliance
• How finance can finally get its own “single pane of glass”
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⏱️ Episode Highlights (Timestamps)
• 00:00 – Ahikam’s journey from CFO to AI founder
• 05:00 – The two unsolved problems in corporate finance
• 09:30 – Why audit trails break across modern systems
• 14:00 – What really goes wrong when financial data is wrong
• 18:30 – How AI understands contracts and financial documents
• 24:00 – Humans vs machines in financial decision-making
• 30:00 – The CFO’s evolving role in AI transformation
• 36:00 – Regulation, compliance, and AI realities
• 43:00 – Advice for founders building in finance
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
• Topics: AI agents, financial audit trails, CFO transformation, data governance