The point of view
TMT’s next capital cycle will be decided by who captures value—and who remains committed when the story changes.
An acquisition buys a business. A long-term compute reservation buys access and an obligation. A sports license buys conditional rights. A network joint venture buys shared influence. All can advance the same capability strategy, with very different consequences for cash, control and reversibility.
Koko’s hypothesis: the TMT CFO of 2030 becomes an architect of these economic relationships. By 2035, finance could continuously connect capital commitments, permissions, operational outcomes and verified value across businesses and partners. Trusted Finance makes that coordination dependable: protect enterprise value, create new value and orchestrate its delivery.
This sector companion extends the standalone CFO Future Guide. Read TMT Enterprise Future Guide for the capability and C-suite operating model. Evidence reviewed September 16, 2026; the hypotheses are conditional, and this is not a live transaction feed.
The CFO’s job expands from allocation to commitment design
Deloitte’s TMT finance survey covers 175 CFOs and senior finance professionals at companies with at least US$1 billion in revenue. Its summary points to a gap between AI adoption and demonstrated value with agentic deployment. It also emphasizes scenario planning, governance and technical skills. That supports a readiness agenda, not a claim that the future finance model has already arrived. Deloitte ↗
Koko’s extension is to put five questions in every material investment decision:
- Protect: which cash flows, customer promises, rights and control obligations are at risk?
- Create: what customer outcome improves, who pays, and what is the incremental contribution?
- Orchestrate: who owns delivery across internal teams and counterparties?
- Commit: what remains payable under a lower-demand, delayed or restricted-use case?
- Adapt: what can we change, transfer, renegotiate or exit—and at what cost?
The same questions should govern organic builds, acquisitions, partnerships and divestitures. The unit of review is the capability and its full set of commitments.
Three hypotheses for CFO 2030
Technology: recurring revenue becomes a quality question
Hypothesis: finance will distinguish revenue tied to enduring workflow value from revenue tied to a pricing convention. An agent can increase usage while reducing the need for human seats; inference, support and review costs can also rise as automation expands.
Gartner’s forecast concerns application spending exposed to agentic repricing, not revenue already lost. EY’s technology outlook adds portfolio, ecosystem and business-model choices. Gartner ↗ EY ↗
Do now: separate revenue and margin by pricing unit, customer cohort and accepted outcome. Model contract renewals under both incumbent adaptation and price compression. Track gross margin after model usage, credits, retries, human exceptions and partner fees. A rising volume of agent calls is not enough.
Falsifier: customers continue to renew existing pricing with durable margins and no meaningful substitution. Retain that business model where the evidence supports it.
Media: the finance data product becomes a rights-and-cash product
Hypothesis: the CFO’s view of a franchise will connect contracts, permitted uses, audiences, revenue shares and cash realization across screens and experiences.
EY’s media outlook emphasizes aggregation, distinctive experiences and creator partnerships; PwC’s outlook provides a market-level forward view. Neither proves that an individual content acquisition earns its cost. EY ↗ PwC ↗
Do now: build a rights-and-cash data product for one library or franchise. Include territories, windows, consent, guarantees, partner splits, receivables and attributable contribution. Have legal and creative owners resolve conflicting rights before agents suggest new uses. Reconcile reported engagement to contractual settlement and cash.
Falsifier: the new view fails to change licensing, renewal or production decisions, or measurement costs exceed the value at stake. Narrow the product to consequential decisions.
Telecom: capacity is valuable only when the economics connect
Hypothesis: finance will coordinate network utilization, customer demand and partner economics as one investment system. Route density, take-up, quality and customer retention may matter more than the volume of infrastructure announced.
PwC’s telecom outlook focuses on fiber consolidation and fixed-mobile convergence. Analysys Mason’s public episode description frames network ownership against larger AI infrastructure capital demands. PwC ↗ Analysys Mason ↗
Do now: link commitments and installed capacity to contracted demand, utilization and contribution by location and service. Compare owned build, wholesale, joint venture and capacity reservation. Put resilience and service obligations in the model, alongside concentration and renewal exposure.
Falsifier: incremental capacity cannot earn its full cost or customers will not pay for the adjacent service. Shrink, share or repurpose the commitment before extending it.
M&A diligence must test the business after AI changes it
KPMG and PwC describe a market increasingly focused on strategic capabilities and monetization. Bain highlights the difficulty of integrating businesses while transforming them with AI; BCG cautions that headline recovery can be concentrated in large deals. KPMG ↗ PwC ↗ Bain & Company ↗ BCG ↗
Koko’s proposed diligence standard has three cases: the standalone business, the combined business with executable changes, and the combined business under disruption. Each needs a named operating owner and reconciled cash model.
| Sector | Diligence that changes the price | Integration evidence required before scaling |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | Customer renewal resilience; inference economics; transferable data and model rights; cyber exposure; dependency on a platform or key engineers. | Workflow retention, permission integrity, net contribution and measurable delivery capacity. |
| Media | Chain of title; rights windows; sports and talent guarantees; audience overlap; advertising attribution; platform and distributor dependence. | Rights clearance, cash settlement, retained audiences and contribution after content and integration costs. |
| Telecom | Route-level demand and overlaps; spectrum/permit conditions; capex backlog; wholesale commitments; service liabilities and cyber resilience. | Service continuity, take-up, utilization, churn and cash returns after required network spending. |
Do not count one improvement twice as a cost synergy, AI productivity benefit and avoided future hire. Separate gross opportunity, implementation cost, released capacity and cash actually removed or redeployed. Use clean-team and access controls during diligence; anticipated integration is not authority to combine restricted information.
Divestiture readiness is an enterprise capability
McKinsey’s sector analysis treats separation and partnership alongside consolidation. Koko’s inference: a company that can explain an asset’s standalone economics, rights and dependencies can make better ownership decisions even if it never sells. McKinsey ↗
A credible separation model includes stranded costs, transition-service agreements, tax and financing dependencies, customer consents, identity boundaries and knowledge portability. A shared data platform can enable a sale—or make separation expensive if rights, definitions and access were never disentangled.
The CFO’s decision: compare retain-and-improve, partner, carve out and sell. Avoid labeling every slower-growth asset noncore; dependable cash generation may fund the next capability. Avoid assuming a divestiture releases all allocated overhead. Name who will remove or absorb each retained cost, by when.
Partnerships belong on the capital agenda
A partnership can reduce acquisition cost and increase concentration risk at the same time. Evaluate its contractual obligations alongside owned assets.
| Arrangement | Economic exposure to make visible | Decision right to negotiate |
|---|---|---|
| Compute or network capacity | Minimum purchases, utilization, power pass-through, price resets, collateral and supplier concentration. | Scale-down rights, portability, service remedies and termination conditions. |
| Content, sports or creator partnership | Guarantees, production obligations, revenue share, exclusivity and renewal leverage. | Permitted formats/territories, audience-data access, consent and rights reversion. |
| AI or network platform ecosystem | Integration cost, revenue sharing, customer ownership, indemnities and dependency. | Data use, model changes, incident responsibility, audit evidence and exit support. |
| Joint venture | Capital calls, guarantees, funding priority, deadlock and distributions. | Reserved matters, commercial authority, reporting and transfer rights. |
These are Koko’s management questions, not conclusions about a particular contract’s accounting treatment. Controllers, treasury, tax and legal teams must establish the treatment and approval requirements for the actual arrangement.
Accenture and Capgemini’s telecom research supports exploring customer outcomes and ecosystems. It does not establish that partners have solved accountability or made those outcomes profitable. Accenture ↗ Capgemini ↗
Transactions are evidence of choices, not proof of value
Status checked against the primary materials below on September 16, 2026. The examples are selected US cases, not a complete deal census. Proposed benefits remain unverified. Announcement, regulatory clearance and completion are separate events.
| Case and dated evidence | Status in the reviewed evidence | Koko’s question |
|---|---|---|
| Google / Wiz, March 11, 2026. Google ↗ | Completed acquisition, per Google. Multicloud commitments remain management statements. | Can ownership strengthen the security capability while preserving customer trust across platforms? |
| Lumen / AT&T consumer fiber, February 2, 2026. Lumen ↗ | Completed sale/acquisition, per company announcements. Lumen retained backbone assets. | Does the buyer improve network economics while the seller redeploys capital without excessive retained costs? |
| Comcast / Versant, January 5 announcement. Comcast ↗ | Completed separation, effective January 2, 2026. | Are standalone cash flows and retained dependencies better understood after separation? |
| Comcast / NBCUniversal and Sky, June 29, 2026. Comcast ↗ | Proposed separation, with an approximately one-year target and stated conditions. Different from Versant. | Do both proposed companies have viable funding, service arrangements and strategic freedom? |
| Paramount / Warner Bros. Discovery, August 4 filing and September 8 update. Paramount ↗ Paramount ↗ | Proposed; not closed in the reviewed evidence. Paramount says clearances are satisfied but confirms the no-close agreement remains in place during litigation. | How do delay, financing and potential remedies change the value case before any synergy is realized? |
| AT&T / T-Mobile / Verizon satellite venture, May 14, 2026. AT&T ↗ | Agreement in principle, subject to definitive agreements and closing conditions in the announcement. | Which rights and obligations are shared, and what pays for expanded coverage? |
| Aduna Number Verification, July 8, 2026. Aduna ↗ | Product rollout announced with major US carriers; not a reported M&A closing. | Do verified customer outcomes support adoption, pricing and each partner’s share of value? |
The Paramount updates are related evidence about the same transaction. A company’s position in litigation is not a court ruling. A product launch is not an observed return. These distinctions matter when Ask Koko compares the records.
Cross-report comparison: what changes the CFO decision?
| Research lens | What the evidence emphasizes | Koko’s differentiated capital question |
|---|---|---|
| Big Four sector perspectives | KPMG: strategic deal logic. PwC: ownership/access and subsector economics. EY: portfolios, trust and business-model change. Deloitte: finance readiness and value realization. KPMG ↗ PwC ↗ EY ↗ Deloitte ↗ | Which specific constraint justifies the commitment, and what evidence would reverse the decision? |
| Strategy firms | McKinsey: several portfolio routes. Bain: integration plus transformation. BCG: uneven deal-market recovery. McKinsey ↗ Bain & Company ↗ BCG ↗ | Can the organization execute the business case under a slower-demand or delayed-close scenario? |
| Telecom services research | Accenture and Capgemini: enterprise expectations and ecosystem delivery. Accenture ↗ Capgemini ↗ | Who pays, who delivers and who carries liability when several partners produce the outcome? |
| Analysts and investors | Gartner: repricing exposure. Bessemer: infrastructure opportunities. Gartner ↗ Bessemer Venture Partners ↗ | Which assumption concerns demand, pricing or cost—and which is merely a forecast or investor thesis? |
Do not pool survey percentages or deal-market totals. Samples, time windows, transaction definitions and interests differ. Use the two-to-six report comparison to examine the actual reviewed arguments and their limits.
CFO 2035: change the capital choice when the conditions change
| Conditional future | Capital stance | Evidence to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Compounding enterprise: useful technology, strong readiness | Scale proven capability products; preserve liquidity and negotiate continued portability. | Contribution after all delivery costs, reliable control evidence, profitable renewals and realized cash. |
| Stranded intelligence: useful technology, weak readiness | Redirect spend from duplicate tools and serial acquisitions to knowledge, integration and workforce capability. | Exception backlog, conflicting rights, integration delays and benefits that never reach cash or capacity. |
| Disciplined optionality: constrained technology, strong readiness | Keep bounded experiments and improve existing economics; prefer staged commitments where appropriate. | Demand conversion, reliable performance, falling total delivery cost and credible rights clearance. |
| Fragmented progress: constrained technology, weak readiness | Protect essential services and liquidity; simplify exposures and avoid assuming interoperability. | Regional restrictions, outages, concentration, stranded capacity and growing compliance costs. |
Sovereignty and regulation can alter any case. The European Commission’s Digital Networks Act is a proposal in the reviewed material, not an enacted operating rule. Assign legal owners to track jurisdiction-specific changes and update the investment assumptions when decisions become effective. European Commission ↗
The next 90 days: fund foundations that earn their place
| When and accountable partnership | Tangible deliverable | Gate and metric |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1–30: CFO + strategy + procurement + treasury | One inventory of acquisitions, capacity reservations, guarantees, rights and partnership commitments, linked to capability owners. | Reconcile material commitments to contracts and cash forecasts; quantify downside liquidity and concentration. |
| Days 1–30: CDO + controller + legal + business owner | Prioritized definitions and provenance for one sector data product: software outcome economics, media rights-and-cash, or network demand-and-capacity. | Resolve material definition and permission conflicts before scaling; measure completeness and reconciliation exceptions. |
| Days 31–60: CIO/CTO + CAIO + CISO + finance | A governed agent workflow with defined authority, evaluations, approval points, logs, recovery and a human owner. | Scale only if accepted outcomes improve after review/remediation cost and controls meet agreed thresholds. |
| Days 31–60: CHRO + capability owner + CFO | Role-specific learning and work redesign for finance, engineering, creative or network teams. | Demonstrated proficiency and service quality; track capacity actually redeployed, not training attendance alone. |
| Days 61–90: CFO + CEO + business leaders | A build/buy/partner/divest decision for one capability, with a credible separation or exit case. | Approve against downside cash, contribution and delivery capacity; explicitly choose scale, renegotiate, pause or stop. |
| Days 61–90: controller + risk, challenged by internal audit | A value evidence pack joining contracts, permissions, decisions and realized outcomes. | Claims reconcile; exceptions have owners; delivery teams do not certify their own independent assurance. |
Maintain a monthly review of pricing, customer adoption, capacity utilization and partner concentration, and an event-triggered review for a material deal, regulatory or contract change. This is a recommended operating cadence, not an automated monitoring service.
The next investment memo should show more than expected value. It should show who is allowed to act, what remains committed if assumptions fail and how the organization will know that value was actually delivered.