TOGETHER WITH KION
Can enterprises prove the value of their AI spend?
In the first State of Tokenomics report, 43% of organizations cited proving AI value as a top challenge. Just 7% pointed to cost and pricing complexity.
The findings reveal a shift in enterprise AI economics. Tracking token consumption and costs is only part of the picture. FinOps teams also need to understand who's driving that spend, what it's producing, and which investments are worth scaling.
Our blog breaks down five key findings from the State of Tokenomics report, including:
✓ Why cost visibility doesn't equal ROI and what it takes to connect AI spend to business outcomes
✓ How clear ownership and accountability affect an organization's ability to demonstrate value
✓ Why greater transparency and financial guardrails matter more than simply lowering AI costs
See what the data reveals about the future of FinOps for AI.
CLOUD COST MONITORING
What If Your AWS Bill Suddenly Doubled? Build a Cost Anomaly Detector with Terraform
A surprise AWS bill can send finance and engineering teams searching for answers. Yash Trivedi’s Python cost reporter aims to give both teams one clear view of spending across AWS accounts.
The tool runs inside your AWS setup and creates an Excel report with four tabs:
Account costs and month-to-month changes.
Service costs, ranked by the largest dollar increases.
Unused disks and IP addresses, with estimated monthly waste.
Savings Plans and Reserved Instance coverage, plus spending spikes.
Teams can run checks on demand or set up a monthly report. Read-only roles let it check resources across accounts without separate API keys.
Across six environments, the author reports that audits and cleanup helped cut costs by over $650 a month.
That included more than $62 a month tied to 11 unused storage volumes.
Two limits matter: the GitHub link is still pending, and a monthly report is not a live alert.
Any savings commitment also needs a check against future usage. Pair cost reports with resource checks, then assign owners to act on the findings.
CLOUD PROVIDERS
AWS trims AI and event costs & Azure shows what drives metric usage
AWS
Bedrock Prompt Optimization now shortens prompts, so you pay for fewer input tokens and get faster replies.
Lambda loop detection now covers EventBridge custom event buses, stopping runaway calls before they cause surprise charges.
Amazon ECS Gateway lets up to 25 services share one load balancer, which means fewer load balancers to pay for and manage.
DynamoDB global tables can now drop a replica without deleting the table, making it easier to cut replication costs.
Read All AWS Updates
Google Cloud
GKE Standard can reuse existing VMs during node upgrades, keeping compute capacity in place instead of rebuilding VMs.
Compute Engine adds graceful shutdown, giving the guest OS up to six hours to finish its work before a stop or delete.
Read All GCP Updates
Azure
Azure Monitor workspace metrics usage insights is now GA, showing what drives metrics usage so you can find unused metrics.
Azure Monitor advanced platform metrics is now GA, giving finer detail to spot waste and odd spending changes.
Virtual Machine Scale Sets now balance zones automatically, keeping workloads spread out without manual fixes.
Read All Azure Updates
EVENTS
FinOps Weekly Summit 2026
The first sessions from FinOps Weekly Summit 2026 are now available!
Catch the key insights, expert perspectives, and actionable strategies from our speakers.
Watch the sessions now and stay ahead in the evolving world of FinOps.
VIDEOS & PODCASTS
AI is making FinOps forget about Cloud
AI is driving cloud costs higher than ever. David Linthicum explains why AI cost management, FinOps, observability, and forecasting are critical to controlling AI and cloud spending while maximizing business value.
CLOUD NETWORKING COSTS
AWS Data Transfer Costs: NAT, Cross-AZ, and VPC Endpoints
Your AWS data traffic may cost far more than the servers running your apps. In Tom Jose’s example, six worker nodes cost $357 a month, while network charges reach $2,404.
The main costs come from moving data between zones and sending AWS service traffic through a NAT gateway, which handles outbound connections.
Changes to how traffic flows cut the example’s network bill to $694 a month, a 71% drop, with no change to compute or storage.
Use free gateway endpoints for S3 and DynamoDB so traffic can skip NAT fees.
Keep internal service calls inside the cluster instead of using public web addresses.
Keep traffic in the same zone where practical, with enough app copies in each zone to handle demand.
Check traffic volume before adding paid endpoints; low use can make them cost more than they save.
In Cost Explorer, group charges by usage type and check DataTransfer and NatGateway.
Add owner tags and monthly alerts so teams can act on rising costs. Review where data goes, not just which servers you run.
BUSINESS VALUE
The CTO Said Yes. Would the CFO Agree?
Your CTO backs the cloud upgrade, but can your CFO see why it deserves funding?
Thilina Uvindasiri argues that a sound tech plan still needs a clear business case.
Money spent on one project cannot fund another, so teams must show why their plan should come first.
That means asking more than “What will it cost?”
- Link spending to results, such as lower cost per order, faster releases, or fewer outages.
- Compare a small fix, a phased rollout, and a full rebuild.
- Show what each option costs, what it delivers, and when benefits should arrive.
- Explain the cost and risk of waiting.
For example, a cloud upgrade proposal could show whether it would cut support work or help handle more orders without matching growth in costs.
Test those claims in a small rollout before seeking full funding. Some spending protects the business rather than raising sales right away.
The goal is not the cheapest tech plan, but the strongest case for creating or protecting business value.
🎖️ MENTION OF HONOUR
Manage Version Sharding with Multiple FOCUS Data Generator Exports
Your cloud cost report can run without errors and still mix numbers that mean different things.
FOCUS, a shared format for tech cost and usage data, helps bring bills together.
But providers adopt new versions at different times, leaving FinOps teams with a mix of versions to manage.
Most changes add fields rather than remove them. Of the 43 columns in version 1.0, 41 remain in version 1.4. The bigger risk is a change in meaning.
Version 1.4 revised the rules for BilledCost and EffectiveCost, so matching column names alone do not make totals safe to compare.
Start with these steps:
Add the data source and FOCUS version to every row when you load it.
Use shared columns for reports across providers, after checking their definitions.
Keep newer fields in clearly marked, provider-specific reports until you can align the data.
For each gap in past data, record whether you can rebuild it, request it, or must leave it empty. Track versions and changes now so leaders can trust what cost reports say.
We Are More than a Newsletter
FinOps Learnings (30% off only for members)
Hands-on on-demand workshops led by FinOps Experts, with a limited discount for members. Learn about:
Discounts on FinOps Certifications
Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 to get an instant 20% discount on the most prestigious certification bundles:
FinOps Certified Practitioner
FinOps AI Value
FinOps Technology Value
FinOps Certified Engineer
FinOps Certified FOCUS Analyst
FinOps Weekly Community
Join the Slack community where the real FinOps conversations happen
FinOps Jobs
Join our FinOps Weekly Jobs Newsletter to have a weekly email with the most relevant updates every Monday
FinOps Hub
Find the right FinOps solution for your company in our Hub
Want to appear in FinOps Weekly? Talk with us