How CFOs at hyper-growth AI startups can take back control of company spend

As AI startups scale globally at unprecedented speed, their financial operations struggle to keep pace. With teams distributed worldwide and investor pressure mounting, controlling company spend has never been more challenging or business-critical.

Am I following the typical startup spend journey?

Every successful AI startup begins with a brilliant idea. Then comes the rush of early development: assembling a talented team, securing initial funding, and racing to build your product. In this whirlwind of activity, financial infrastructure often takes a back seat – and that's where the trouble begins.

The typical startup financial journey follows a familiar pattern. In those early days, the founder – often more focused on product and vision than financial operations – cobbles together basic banking and payment solutions. 

It's a common pain point: those with scale-up ambitions eventually need to bring in a finance director or CFO to manage the numbers properly, but by then they inherit a headache-inducing hodgepodge of disparate systems thrown together by a non-finance person. 

It starts with a basic current account from a local high-street bank. Soon, international payments become necessary, so another financial provider gets added to the mix. As the team grows, company cards and expense management tools proliferate.

What begins as a simple need for basic financial tools quickly spirals into a complex web of disconnected systems, each solving just one piece of the puzzle.

Why AI startups face unique financial challenges

The challenges of financial management become particularly acute for AI companies, who are experiencing a period of hyper-growth – consider that, according to TechCrunch, investments in generative AI skyrocketed to $56 billion globally in 2024, a 192% increase from the $29.1 billion invested in 2023. 

Unlike traditional software startups that might spend years building their presence in a single market, AI companies often need to go global almost immediately. Customer demand emerges simultaneously across multiple regions. Talent is distributed worldwide. And investor pressure to scale quickly while maintaining tight control over cash burn creates a perfect storm of financial complexity.

Development teams in Singapore need paying? Set up a new payment system. Sales office opening in Portugal? Another system. US expansion? Yet another. Before long, companies find themselves juggling multiple platforms, currencies, and processes – each chosen because, as one founder explained to me recently, "we needed something at the time".

The 4 (major) hidden costs of fragmented finance

The impact of fragmented financial systems goes far beyond operational inefficiency. When finance teams inherit this patchwork of solutions, they face multiple challenges that directly affect company growth and culture.

Lack of visibility

First comes the visibility problem. Without a single source of truth for company spend, making informed decisions about resource allocation becomes nearly impossible. As one CFO told me: "I'm constantly putting out fires instead of having the headspace to think about future-proofing our operations."

Pesky fees

Then, there's the hidden cost of foreign transaction fees. Companies lose thousands simply because each regional office has its own payment solution. Another finance leader shared how they were spending hours reconciling expenses across multiple systems, leading to team burnout.

Fragmented tools = fragmented culture

Most critically, fragmented systems affect business operations and company culture at every level. Finance teams waste hours managing subscription payments across different cards, chasing international supplier invoices, and reconciling expenses in multiple currencies. Different offices develop their own processes for everything from software purchases to vendor payments, creating inconsistency and friction. 

Losing control over spend

Meanwhile, the lack of real-time visibility over spending makes it impossible to maintain effective controls – teams might be paying for redundant software subscriptions or processing duplicate invoices without anyone noticing. The finance team manages this complexity so much that they can't focus on strategic work like forecasting and budget optimisation. It's often accepted as part and parcel of startup culture – but it really doesn't have to be.

Building a future-proof financial infrastructure

What does the ideal financial infrastructure look like?

For scale-up companies, the ideal financial infrastructure must be simple yet comprehensive: one platform that handles all global payments, expenses and company spending, integrates seamlessly with essential business systems like ERP, accounting and HR platforms, and grows alongside the business. 

It should provide complete visibility over cash flow while automating time-consuming tasks like receipt processing and reconciliation. Most importantly, it should work the same way across every market the company operates in, creating consistency for teams worldwide while maintaining tight control over spending.

At Airwallex, after speaking with numerous high-growth companies, we understood that solving these challenges required more than just another expense management tool. What fast-growing companies need is a truly unified platform that can handle everything from employee expenses to vendor payments, across all markets, in one place.

This is exactly why we built Airwallex Spend. We've created a comprehensive platform that grows with your company, offering the following:

• Account Payable, expenses, reimbursements, bill pay, cards and payment collection and transfers all in one.

• Real-time visibility across all company spending, no matter where your teams and entities are located. 

• Automated receipt processing and reconciliation to free up your finance team's time. 

• Virtual cards for employees worldwide, with built-in controls to prevent out-of-policy spending and custom approval flows to scale as you do. 

• Seamless integration with your existing tech stack, from accounting software to ERP systems.

For AI startups racing to capture global opportunities, having the right financial infrastructure is about efficiency – and also maintaining control while moving at the speed your market demands. By consolidating your entire accounts payable function onto a single platform, you can eliminate the friction of rapid scaling while maintaining the controls needed to manage burn rate effectively.

The future of AI is global, and your financial infrastructure needs to match this reality. Don't wait until after you've scaled to fix your financial operations – by then, it might be too late.