Figma CFO Praveer Melwani on how AI is rewriting the finance function
a16z Podcast · rss · 2026-11-05
On the a16z Podcast, Figma CFO Praveer Melwani explains how AI is shifting finance from reconciling last month's numbers to shaping next quarter's decisions.
- Inside Figma: automation of collections and expense analysis; corp dev uses AI in M&A diligence to prototype products and simulate how leaders would challenge an investment memo
- Key themes: AI "slop" as a real risk, build-vs-buy decisions, and why successful internal experiments eventually need a centralized systems layer to turn one-off agents into reliable infrastructure
- His hiring bar: not whether someone can use AI, but whether they understand the business, interrogate the output, and communicate clearly without outsourcing their thinking
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