Why a CFO's top skill isn't capital allocation—it's influence

Good morning. Happy New Year! Today’s CFOs are expected not only to own the numbers, but also to act as core strategists, digital leaders, and enterprise change agents.

I recently talked about this topic with Robinhood CFO Jason Warnick and his successor, Shiv Verma, SVP of finance and strategy and treasurer. At Robinhood, the Menlo Park, Calif.–based fintech and asset trading platform, Verma is stepping into the top finance job. Warnick is retiring and moving into an advisory role this quarter, remaining with the company until Sept. 1.

Earlier in his career, Warnick—who joined Robinhood in late 2018 after two decades at Amazon—said he was once asked by a mentor, “What do you think is the most important aspect of a CFO’s job?” Warnick answered, “capital allocation.”

“That’s important; that’s what drives future returns for the company,” he recalls his mentor telling him. “But you don’t get to allocate the capital yourself.” The most important skill a CFO has, Warnick said, is influencing the ultimate decision-maker—the CEO. “So our job is to bring data and finance into the discussion and influence the outcome,” he said.

Verma has spent a lot of time with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, the board, and cross-functional leaders in engineering, legal, compliance, and risk, focusing on the decisions that matter most for Robinhood’s long-term trajectory, he said.

While both roles are critical on their own, the quality of the CEO–CFO partnership often matters more than what either leader can achieve individually. CEOs are leaning on their CFOs as strategic thought partners as businesses confront rapid technological change and evolving stakeholder expectations. In that context, finance chiefs provide enterprise-wide visibility and help turn ambiguity into concrete scenarios, trade-offs, and decisions.

Verma, now Tenev’s strategic partner, describes Robinhood’s past seven years as a compressed Silicon Valley life cycle: early build-out, pandemic-era hypergrowth, the GameStop frenzy, and an IPO, followed by a sharp selloff. In 2022, Robinhood cut roughly 30% of its workforce and shifted to a general manager model intended to cut excessive management layers and give managers broader responsibility for their businesses. “We’ve come a long way,” Verma said, “to a very skilled public company.” In 2024, the company earned $2.95 billion in total net revenue and annual net income of $1.41 billion. In September, it joined the S&P 500.

Robinhood has also managed to create a model of corporate governance and succession planning. To find out how the company handled the CFO transition, you can read more here.

Sheryl [email protected]

Leaderboard

Jason Chung was promoted to CFO of Riot Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: RIOT), effective March 1, 2026. Chung succeeds Colin Yee, who has served as the company’s CFO since 2022. Chung currently serves as Riot’s EVP and head of corporate development and strategy, and brings two decades of experience in investment banking and corporate finance to the CFO role. He will assume leadership of Riot’s finance organization while continuing to oversee corporate development and investor relations.

Dan Moorhead was appointed CFO of Beyond Air, Inc. (Nasdaq: XAIR), a commercial stage medical device and biopharmaceutical company, effective Jan. 5. Duke Dewrell, the company’s controller, who served as interim CFO, will resume his prior role as of that date. Moorhead brings more than 20 years of finance leadership experience. He previously served as CFO of Zynex, Inc. Before that, Moorhead spent 10 years at Evolving Systems, Inc. (acquired by PartnerOne, Inc.), serving as CFO following earlier roles as VP of finance and administration and corporate controller.

Big Deal

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla (No. 43 on the Fortune 500) released its fourth-quarter 2025 production, deliveries, and deployments report on Friday.

In Q4, Tesla produced over 434,000 vehicles, delivered over 418,000 vehicles, and deployed 14.2 GWh of energy storage products, which is a record for deployments, according to the company. Tesla sales totaled 418,227 vehicles in Q4, short of analysts’ expectations of around 440,000 vehicles, including a FactSet consensus of roughly 440,000. Sales were impacted in part by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit for EV purchases that was ended by the Trump administration at the end of September.

For the full year 2025, the company delivered 1.64 million vehicles, down about 9% from 1.79 million in 2024. In comparison, Chinese competitor BYD sold about 2.26 million electric vehicles in 2025, now making it the world’s biggest EV maker.

Going deeper

“5 takeaways on Venezuela in the aftermath of Maduro: A memo to CEOs” is a new Fortune opinion piece by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Lester Crown Professor of Leadership Practice at the Yale School of Management and founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.

Three of the key themes Sonnenfeld argues every CEO should think about are:

—”Consider an immediate, temporary moratorium on executive travel between the U.S. and Latin America, and take care in Lower Manhattan.”

— “Hold off on public statements of support or condemnation until the justice process in the U.S. unfolds, Venezuelan streets and government processes are stable, succession is clear, and public statements emerge from Latin American nations.”

—”Prepare for prospective Latin American backlash against U.S. enterprises with major market engagement and trade relations.”

You can read his complete opinion piece here.

Overheard

“You make investments in safety or investments in people, and they don’t necessarily show up on the bottom line—at least not immediately.”

—Waste Management CEO Jim Fish told Fortune in an interview. “Safety tends to show up in longer terms, and if you do have a safe organization, that will eventually show up on your income statement—but it takes a while,” Fish said.

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