1185: Scaling Smarter in the AI Era | Sarah Riley, CFO, dbt Labs

1185: Scaling Smarter in the AI Era | Sarah Riley, CFO, dbt Labs

From CFO THOUGHT LEADER by The Future of Finance is Listening

May 10, 2026 · 41 min

About this episode

Sarah Riley discusses her experiences at Zoom and the challenges of finance leadership in the AI era as CFO of dbt Labs.

When the pandemic began reshaping the world in early 2020, Sarah Riley was helping guide finance at Zoom through an unprecedented surge in demand. “You could see the volume of Zoom almost spiking up by the regions that were going into shutdown,” Riley tells us. What followed was unlike anything most software companies had experienced before. During her four years at Zoom, the company expanded from roughly $200 million in ARR to $4 billion, Riley tells us. At one point, Zoom spent nearly half a billion dollars on AWS infrastructure costs it had not anticipated, she explains. For Riley, the experience fundamentally reshaped how she viewed finance leadership. Rather than becoming fixated on gross margin guidance or traditional planning cycles, she says the finance team had to continually reevaluate the “strategic heart” of the business as Zoom evolved from an enterprise software company into a platform supporting schools, consumers, and businesses worldwide. “Forecasting and discipline comes second” in moments of extraordinary change, Riley tells us. That mindset now informs her role as CFO of dbt Labs, where she oversees finance, accounting, and data operations while helping guide…

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Guest: Sarah Riley

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Organizations: Zoom, dbt Labs, Fivetran

Products: AWS

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