Where is AI actually gaining traction across the OCFO stack, and what does that mean for valuation trends and deal activity? The Drake Star OCFO team, in cooperation with leading global strategy firm Altman Solon, has set out to answer exactly that question in the new Sector Insights H1-2026 report, "The Office of the CFO: Market Perspectives and Coverage."
Where AI Is Creating Value
Today, AI-native vendors only capture a small share of global OCFO software spend but are expanding rapidly. The report maps out in detail where AI actually creates value, which cohort captures it, and over what timeframe AI-adoption is expected to roll out. Public OCFO peers have de-rated over the past twelve months, trading below the NASDAQ, although a recovery from their Q2-26 lows is ongoing. The underlying fundamentals, including double-digit growth and expanding margins, remain intact.
Private markets have been able to better capture and price the AI-native premia, documented by buyers pricing roughly a 40% multiple premium for AI-native assets compared with vendors carrying no AI-positioning at all. In fact, the premium for AI-enabled solutions is considerably smaller – a sign that buyers have been rewarding genuine architecture rather than surface-level AI features.
Why Buyers Are Paying Up for Architecture
It was a very busy half year for OCFO deal activity more broadly: We tracked more than 220 M&A and financing transactions involving OCFO software targets in H1-2026 alone, roughly 100 M&A deals and 120 fundings. M&A activity was mainly driven by strategic acquisitions and AI-driven add-ons while, funding rounds concentrated on AI-native finance software.
To identify who is actually building this next generation of tools, the report includes two dedicated AI-native market maps, spanning horizontal solutions across the OCFO stack as well as vertical, industry-specific finance tools, tracking the fast-growing set of AI-first vendors taking share from incumbents.
The thread running through all of it comes back to architecture rather than features: The market breaks down into three cohorts defined by how deeply AI sits in their core, and the deal activity reflects exactly that – incumbents buying what they cannot build themselves, and buyers willing to pay up for AI-ready architecture itself.
The report also takes a clear-eyed view of how far this still has to run: Taking accounts payable automation as an example, AI-adoption is expected to be a 5–10-year journey as use cases become clearer and trust in AI agents grows. Capability is largely in place today – trust is the binding constraint.
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