FinOps in the AI Era:
A Critical Recalibration

If your cloud cost desk was flipped by AI, you’re not alone. We asked 475 organizational leaders about their own experience, and we share our learnings in this new survey report.

80
%
4 out of 5 orgs now have a 
FinOps function
65
%
Cloud Efficiency Rate (CER) dropped from 80% to 65%
20
%
AI spend projections were off by 50% or more for 1 in 5 orgs

The great paradox

When FinOps maturity goes up and cost management efficiency goes down, what’s going on? Two letters: AI.

73%
87%
70%
45%
Orgs that assign budgets to FinOps rose from 73% to 87%
1 in 4 orgs now run at 45% efficiency or worse — down from 70%
80
%
factor cloud costs into their pricing
43
%
track cost by customer
22
%
track cost by transaction

The granularity gap

The majority of organizations factor AI costs into their pricing, but rarely see the source of their AI spend.

The fragmented approach

Most organizations combine methods to track spend – but the numbers are scattered when they see totals rise.

When tracking costs:
30%
factor cloud costs into their pricing
63%
Use internal dashboards
47%
Use 3rd party FinOps platforms
57%
Use billing tools

The Cloud and AI Cost Benchmarking Tool

Learn how your cloud and AI spend compares against your peers, and your competition.

Analysis from our experts

Adam Tankanow
Principal Software Engineer

Sustainable AI investment: A systems thinking approach

Erik Peterson
CTO and co-founder at CloudZero

FinOps maturity has never been higher. So why is cloud efficiency plummeting?

Michelle Dufty
Chief Marketing Officer

Surging AI costs are eroding business efficiency

Larry Advey
Director, Cloud Platform & FinOps

The AInigma: FinOps is maturing — so why is cloud efficiency falling?

Calculate your Cloud Efficiency Rate

We get asked all the time: “When we spend a dollar in the cloud, how much do we get back?”

A simple but strong method of quantifying efficiency is to understand how much of your revenue goes toward your cloud spend.

CloudZero’s key metric, the Cloud Efficiency Rate, helps digital businesses evaluate their cloud efficiency. Calculate yours here.

New webinar

FinOps recalibration: the webinar

Michelle Dufty and Ray Rike discuss survey findings and best practices for FinOps in the AI era.

Dig into the findings for yourself

Download the full report for FinOps strategies you can use now.