TOGETHER WITH KION
Which AI investments should you scale or stop?
Knowing what you’re spending on AI is only the beginning. The bigger challenge is understanding what to do with that information once you have it.
At AWS re:Invent 2026, we’ll be showing what FinOps for AI looks like when visibility actually leads to action.
If you’re going this year and FinOps is on your agenda, make sure Kion is too.
🎤 Catch our Lightning talk:
FinOps for AI: Scale Investments That Work. Stop Ones That Don't.
Learn how FinOps teams can move from cost visibility to action with:
AI cost attribution that connects spend to specific use cases
Automated guardrails that help teams respond to spending patterns
Value tracking that ties AI investments to business outcomes
📅 Wednesday, December 2 | 1:00–1:20 PM
📍 AWS Industries Zone, Expo Floor
And if you want to talk through your own AI spend challenges while we’re there, visit us at Booth #622 or grab time with our team
CLOUD COST OPTIMIZATION
AWS billing horror stories: 10 monsters living in your bill
This is 10 cases totaling about $258,000 before refunds, from repeat tasks to fees hidden in routine settings.
Cost alerts warn you, but they do not stop spending. One team’s $300 alert arrived after charges had reached $1,484.
Start with these checks:
Check data routes: one team paid $907.53 in a day because S3 traffic passed through a paid NAT Gateway. A free S3 Gateway Endpoint avoids that fee.
Check log volume: one debug print statement led to almost $1,500 in charges. Keeping logs for less time would not have cut the cost of sending them in.
Review audit settings: broad S3 event tracking reportedly added about $200,000 over time. Keep the records your security team needs, rather than logging every action by default.
Check for resources left running after you delete a test setup.
Review three months of costs by usage type, then pair cost alerts with limits on requests and checks that stop repeat tasks.
As the author puts it, “An alert is a smoke detector, not a fire extinguisher.”
CLOUD PROVIDERS
RDS snapshot billing, ECS Spot savings, and cheaper cross-cloud data access
AWS
Amazon RDS now bills each snapshot on its own. You can see backup costs clearly and use cost tags to find waste.
ECS Managed Instances adds cross-instance and Spot consolidation. It packs work onto fewer instances, so you pay for less.
RDS for Oracle adds M8i and R8i instances in more regions. AWS says they give up to 15% better price-performance.
Read All AWS Updates
Google Cloud
Cross-cloud Lakehouse caching is now GA. It keeps remote files close by, which can lower egress costs and speed up repeat queries.
AlloyDB adds AI query tuning and more Gemini model support. Better queries can mean faster databases and lower spend.
Read All GCP Updates
Azure
Azure Storage Discovery adds advanced capacity insights. You can see data age, tiers, and object sizes to find savings from tiering or cleanup.
Marketplace private offers are easier to set up. Pricing terms fit your needs, which helps with deals and spending.
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.
EVENTS
100th Edition FinOps Weekly Event
We’re bringing the FinOps community together for a special end-of-year event filled with inspiring talks, meaningful conversations, and new connections.
This is your chance to connect with fellow FinOps professionals, share ideas, exchange experiences, and celebrate everything our community has achieved.
Be part of this special milestone and help us make our 100th edition an unforgettable experience!
CLOUD FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Understanding AWS Savings Plans Recommendations: Management vs. Member Account Views
Your AWS Savings Plans advice can change when you switch from the main account to a single team’s account.
That does not mean either view is wrong. The main account view looks at eligible usage across accounts that share discounts.
Team-level views focus on each account, so their totals may not match the main account’s advice.
Shared plans can cover different usage peaks, such as daytime development work and overnight batch jobs.
AWS applies a plan to its owner’s usage first, which can leave less for accounts with higher discounts.
Advice uses hourly usage from the past 7, 30, or 60 days, not a forecast.
Group Sharing can give chosen accounts first access to discounts or keep benefits within a set group.
AWS recommends central buying for many teams. A dedicated account with no workloads can help direct shared discounts to usage with the highest savings, within your sharing rules.
Plan how to split those costs across teams. Before buying, check sharing settings, recent workload changes, and purchase options in Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer.
Choose commitments that fit both your usage and your budget rules.
AI FINOPS
Managing Amazon Bedrock costs end to end: A playbook for FinOps and platform teams
Your AI bill can grow fast when one user task triggers many model calls.
AWS offers a five-step plan for keeping Amazon Bedrock spend tied to owners, budgets, and results.
Name the owner: Use identity tags to track costs by team and app. A shared gateway role can hide who spent the money, so keep each user’s identity in the billing records.
Track each request: Add logs and labels for each app and task. Billing data can lag by about a day; logs help teams spot cost spikes sooner.
Set budget controls: Start with alerts, then add spending blocks where the risk calls for them. Alerts alone cannot stop a bill from growing.
Cut waste by default: Test cheaper models for simple tasks and reuse saved prompt content. Watch reuse rates, since saving content that is never reused can cost more.
Review together: FinOps and platform teams should check costs, errors, and savings each week or every two weeks.
Treat cost per successful result as the key measure, not cost per call.
A cheaper AI task still wastes money if its result has no value.
🎖️ MENTION OF HONOUR
Convert Anthropic, OpenAI and Together AI bills to FinOps FOCUS 1.4 CSV, and check any CSV against FOCUS 1.2-1.4. Runs locally.
AI bills are easier to compare when they share one format.
The free, open-source tool ai-bill-to-focus turns provider exports into FOCUS 1.4 CSV files, giving FinOps teams a common format for cost reports.
It runs on your machine without uploading your bills.
What matters for your team:
Separate rows show daily costs by model and token type, including cache use.
Token counts add usage detail without replacing the provider’s billed charges.
Checks flag bad data, and totals reveal gaps when rows cannot be read.
Scripts can stop when a conversion fails or a file breaks supported FOCUS rules.
Anthropic support has been tested with real exports.
OpenAI and Together AI support is based on their docs, but has not yet been tested with real exports.
The built-in checker does not cover every FOCUS rule; use the official validator for certification. mSome conversions fetch public prices, though an offline option is available.
This offers a practical way to bring direct AI bills into shared cost reports, provided you check the totals and respect the tool’s limits.
We Are More than a Newsletter
FinOps Learnings (30% off only for members)
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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
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