The new FinOps problem isn't cloud bills

At Google Cloud Next 2026, Finout co-founder and CEO Roi Ravhon and Google Cloud FinOps lead Pathik Sharma discussed how FinOps is rapidly evolving for the AI era. Ravhon argued that while cloud FinOps had a decade to mature, AI economics are forcing the industry to adapt within a year. Unlike traditional cloud workloads, AI costs are unpredictable because token usage varies even for identical prompts, while advanced reasoning models consume significantly more tokens despite falling prices. Both emphasized that effective AI FinOps requires intelligent orchestration, routing workloads to the cheapest capable models instead of defaulting to expensive frontier models. Sharma noted that AI costs extend beyond APIs to GPUs, storage, training, and organizational adoption. They also cautioned against relying solely on LLMs for operational automation. Deterministic systems, observability metrics, and human approvals remain essential guardrails. Ultimately, both stressed that FinOps is primarily an organizational and cultural discipline, recommending newcomers start with the FinOps Foundation before investing in tools. Learn more from The New Stack around the latest in FinOps: Why FinOps Isn’t About Saving Money https://thenewstack.io/how-to-build-a-finops-strategy-that-works/ FinOps Foundation’s FOCUS 1.2 Expands to SaaS, PaaS https://thenewstack.io/finops-foundations-focus-1-2-expands-to-saas-paas/ Join our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game. https://thenewstack.io/newsletter