The AI Cost Crisis

Episode 2

Someone's burning through your AI budget

Most AI budgets are approved once and rarely revisited. In the months that follow, consumption spreads across new providers, embedded product features, departmental pilots and automated agents. By the time finance asks for a status update, the answer usually involves multiple teams, spreadsheets and more questions than answers.

This session explores why AI spend is so difficult to pin down compared to traditional IT and cloud costs, where it tends to hide and why organizations often have an incomplete picture of their own consumption.

We’ll cover:

• Where AI spend goes after budget approval
• How shadow AI creates hidden consumption
• Why AI agents are becoming major cost drivers
• Visibility gaps between finance, IT and business teams
• What discovery must uncover before governance can work

More in the AI Cost Crisis series

Episode 1 | On demand

Who’s actually spending your AI budget?

Hear Flexera and guest speaker Tracy Woo, Principal Analyst at Forrester, examine where AI cost accountability resides, how agentic workloads change cost predictability and what the first 90 days of an AI cost management practice should look like.

Watch episode 1 on demand

Episode 3 | Coming November 17

AI: From budget plan to business purpose

Understanding where AI spend occurs is only the beginning. Learn how to connect AI consumption back to the people, agents, teams and workflows driving it, bringing accountability and business context to every AI dollar.