I used to live in excel.
The issue isn’t in creating a new monstrosity in excel.
The issue is the poor SoB who has to spelunk through the damn thing to figure out what it does.
Excel is the sweet spot of just enough to be useful, capable enough to be extensible, yet gated enough to ensure everyone doesn’t auto run foreign macros (or whatever horror is more appropriate).
In the simplest terms - it’s not excel, it’s the business logic. If an excel file works, it’s because theres someone who “gets” it in the firm.
I used to live in Excel too. I've trudged through plenty of awful worksheets. The output I've seen from AI is actually more neatly organized than most of what I used to receive in outlook. Most of that wasn't hyper-sophisticated cap table analyses. It was analysis from a Jr Analyst or line employee trying to combine a few different data sources to get some signal on how XYZ function of the business was performing. AI automation is perfectly suitable for this.
How?
Neat formatting didn't save any model from having the wrong formula pasted in.
Being neat was never a substitute for being well rested, or sufficiently caffeinated.
Have you seen how AI functions in the hands of someone who isn't a domain expert? I've used it for things I had no idea about, like Astro+ web dev. User ignorance was magnified spectacularly.
This is going to have Jr Analysts dumping well formatted junk in email boxes within a month.