Blog

What AI spend is buying, and how to find out.

For the finance and revenue leaders who have to answer for the AI line. Cost allocation, attribution, budgets, and the ratios a board is about to ask for.

• Sep 19, 2026

  What a head of AI should put in front of the board each quarter

  Boards are starting to ask what AI costs and what it produces. A one-page quarterly report that answers both honestly, with the five numbers to include and the three to leave out.

  4 min read

• Sep 18, 2026

  AI capital allocation: from tracking AI spend to directing it

  Tracking AI spend is bookkeeping. Allocating it is a management decision about where the next dollar produces the most. The four questions in order, and why most companies are still on the first.

  4 min read

• Sep 17, 2026

  Claude Enterprise vs ChatGPT Enterprise: what their usage reports give a finance team

  Both enterprise products report what each seat did. They do it differently. A side-by-side of the credentials, the units, the retention and the gaps, for anyone who has to put per-person figures in a plan.

  4 min read

• Sep 16, 2026

  API keys are the hardest part of AI attribution. Here is how to resolve them

  Every AI usage report names keys, and a key is not a person. The three kinds of key, what the providers tell you about each, and a process for turning an unmatched key into an owner.

  4 min read

• Sep 15, 2026

  FinOps for AI: what carries over from cloud cost management and what does not

  FinOps teams are being handed the AI bill. Much of the discipline transfers. Three things do not, and they are the ones that decide whether AI cost management works.

  4 min read

• Sep 14, 2026

  How to set an AI budget by team, and what to do when it is exceeded

  A team AI budget is a threshold with an owner, not a cap. How to pick the number, what has to count against it, how the owner should hear about it, and the three decisions that follow.

  4 min read

• Sep 13, 2026

  Tokens, explained for finance: input, output, cached, and what you pay for

  AI providers bill by the token, in four or five kinds, at different prices. A finance leader's explanation of what a token is, why the kinds matter, and how to read a token-based bill.

  4 min read

• Sep 12, 2026

  Why per-seat AI licenses hide the real cost of AI

  A seat price is the easy number. The cost that matters is what each seat is used for, and per-seat contracts are built so that you never have to find out. How to see through them.

  4 min read

• Sep 11, 2026

  What the Anthropic and OpenAI admin APIs actually tell you about spend

  Both providers expose usage and cost reports to administrators. Here is what each one groups by, what neither reports, and what that means for anyone trying to attribute AI spend to people.

  5 min read

• Sep 10, 2026

  Shadow AI spend: the subscriptions on corporate cards nobody tracks

  The AI bill a company knows about is the contract. The one it does not is the Max plans, Pro seats and coding tools on employee cards. How to find it, count it, and decide what to do with it.

  4 min read

• Sep 9, 2026

  AI spend per closed-won dollar: the first honest AI ROI metric for sales

  The board will ask what AI is producing. For a sales team the first defensible answer is a ratio: AI dollars spent per dollar of closed-won revenue, per rep. How to build it and how to read it.

  4 min read

• Sep 8, 2026

  The CFO's guide to AI budgets

  AI is the first line item that grows with usage nobody approved. How to budget for it: the three shapes of spend, the right owner, the right period, and what a budget is for.

  4 min read

• Sep 7, 2026

  AI cost allocation: how to attribute LLM spend to people and teams

  Providers report cost by workspace, not by person. A practical method for allocating LLM spend to the people and teams behind it, and the rules that keep it honest.

  5 min read

• Sep 6, 2026

  Where does your company's AI spend actually go?

  Most companies can name their AI bill and none of the people behind it. Here is why the number is hard to break down, and what a real breakdown looks like.

  5 min read