Jack Zhang isn’t worried about AI taking over global finance, but he is concerned about cybersecurity.
Zhang co-founded Australian fintech unicorn Airwallex, which allows businesses to make cross-border payments and manage finances in dozens of countries, and is now morphing into an agentic finance company.
Zhang joined Future Proof to discuss how his company is using AI to build systems to help companies handle their finances — essentially building an AI-managed CFO office. The company currently relies mainly on ChatGPT and Claude, but Zhang also said it’s looking at developing proprietary models using open-weight solutions.
Zhang doesn’t think AI will get so good that it can entirely replace humans, at least not in his field. “The laws still require you to have somebody sign off as auditor, and how the auditor does that sign-off can be assisted by agents,” he said. “I don’t think we can completely get rid of the human in the loop.”
What Zhang is “very, very, very, very worried” about is cybersecurity. With news about cyber breaches emerging almost daily, the company is tackling the issue by using behavioral monitoring and hiring experts from the Australian Department of Defence and Palantir, among other strategies.
“We’re moving hundreds of billions of dollars today ...
