If you want to build practical finance skills, you’ve likely come across Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) with Wall Street Prep (WSP). Both providers offer online training in financial modeling, valuation, FP&A, and related fields that appeal to professionals, university students, and career switchers preparing for finance careers. But there are a few key differences. This…
Investment banking and private equity have clear, well-worn career paths. Venture capital doesn’t. The firms are smaller, and the work is more private, which makes it one of finance’s most appealing – and least visible – paths. The headline returns and unicorn valuations get the attention, but far fewer understand what investors actually do, or…
Private equity (PE) firms have always depended on timely information and disciplined execution. Today, many firms are using AI to reduce manual work and give deal teams faster access to relevant information. They’re deploying agentic AI to automate deal workflows, uncover data insights faster, and enable consistent performance monitoring across portfolio companies. As deal environments…
Built for Finance Leaders Who Need Practical Answers Finance teams are now expected to build more sophisticated models, analyze data in real time, adopt AI tools, and provide sharper guidance to the business. At the same time, the skills required to meet these expectations are changing quickly. Skill gaps often sit beneath the surface until…
Is a 1% tax enough to change how corporate America returns billions of dollars to shareholders? In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained, we explore the economics of stock buybacks, the new federal 1% excise tax on share repurchases, and why capital allocation decisions can create enormous shareholder value or destroy it. Stock buybacks have…
How can a company own almost nothing and still become one of the most valuable businesses in the world? In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained, we break down the economics behind platform marketplaces and why companies like Airbnb, Etsy, and Upwork have fundamentally different business models than traditional retailers. Unlike conventional businesses that own…
Market research has always been time-consuming. Analysts spend hours pulling data, synthesizing sources, and compiling reports. By the time the work is done, the insights are already aging. AI agents offer a different model. Instead of one-off research projects, teams can run ongoing, structured tracking of markets, competitors, and business conditions. For finance, strategy, and…
Want to build financial models that other finance professionals can trust? In this episode of What’s New at CFI, Meeyeon sits down with Duncan McKeen, CFI’s VP of Financial Modeling, to discuss Financial Modeling Guidelines, a practical course designed to help analysts build cleaner, more transparent, and more professional Excel models. Instead of building a…
What if the biggest reason companies miss their long-term goals isn’t execution, but the plan itself? In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained, we break down long-range planning (LRP) and why so many corporate strategy plans fail to deliver. While annual budgets focus on the next 12 months and long-term targets inspire investors, a true…
Finance leaders face a practical question about AI agents: Will the investment create measurable value? That question is becoming more urgent as AI spending grows. Deloitte’s 2025 survey of more than 1,800 executives found that 85% of organizations increased their AI investment in 2025, and 91% plan to increase it again. Yet most report satisfactory…
