Only at month's end do you know what burned
With usage-billed AI, you only learn how much burned at the end of the month.
(Illustrative scenario, not a real incident)
Software budgets used to be simple:one seat per person, times the headcount.
AI is different.Much of it is billed by usage.Let an AI agent run all night today,and tomorrow's bill grows a little longer.
At this twenty-person software studio,engineers write code with one AI,the product manager writes specs with another,and one engineerused a third serviceto build a prototype for internal customer support.
Three vendors, four or five accounts;some billed monthly, some prepaid.
One day, the support prototype suddenly stopped working.After a long search, they foundthe prepaid credit had run out.
Looking back, over the past two weeks,usage had clearly been climbing,yet no one got an alert.And if one was sent, it went to someone's personal inbox.
Finance only looks at invoices;engineering decides what to use;everyone sees only one corner.
I used to think the bill was a month-end thing.Later I learnedthat with anything billed by usage,the bill is growing every day.
Spending money isn't frightening.What's frighteningis not knowing the money is flowing away.
Set usage alerts on every AI account, and send them to a shared company inbox, not to just one person.