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AI Burn to Business Return

Learn how leading teams are turning token spend into provable business outcomes.

July 29, 2026   |   Virtual
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Cost visibility

AI Insights

TOKENMAXXING

Optimization

Responsible AI

AI spend

Savings opportunities

cloud cost

budget compliance

01 - speakers

Meet the problem solvers

Linde-Marie Ferreira

Head of FinOps

Eric Santelices

Vice President of Engineering

Jet Semrick

Field Engineer

Eric Lam

Head of Cloud FinOps

J.R. Storment

Founder & Executive Director

Sherri Wooldridge

Manager, FinOps

Mark-David McLaughlin, Ph.D.

Head of Security Architecture and Engineering

Mark Cullen

Head of Cloud FinOps

Paul Kennedy

Technical Lead

Swapna Samuel

MD & Head, FinOps & Value Management

Zach Johnson

Head of FinOps and Cloud Platforms for the Splunk business unit at Cisco

Sagar Veerla

Director of Software Engineering

02 - Topics

Why Attend?

Learn how teams are turning AI spend into provable business returns and leave with a framework you can use starting today.

See what your AI tokens are actually returning

Is your token spend is converting to business value? Learn the token-level attribution, unit economics, and tagging strategies that transform AI spend from a line item into a provable business case.

Connect every token to an outcome

Walk away with the outcome-per-token frameworks and board-ready ROI narratives that keep finance and engineering teams aligned on what AI is actually delivering.

Fix the foundation before AI spend exposes it

Poor tagging, weak allocation, and misaligned commitment strategies don't just waste money, they make outcomemaxxing impossible. Build cost hygiene that turns foundational rigor into a competitive advantage before AI spend finds the gaps.

Shift left and prove ROI before the bill arrives

Discover how leading teams embed cost guardrails and outcome targets directly into the deployment pipeline, giving engineers and leadership the signal they need before the spend is already sunk.

15
Days
14
Hours
38
Minutes
16
Seconds
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03 - schedule

Agenda

Sessions

Time (PT / CEST)

From Blind Spot to Bottom Line: The State of AI FinOps in 2026

AI spend is outpacing every governance framework built to manage it. Two of the industry's most connected voices unpack the State of AI FinOps 2026 report and what separates teams connecting every token to a business outcome from the ones still flying blind.

J.R. Storment
FinOps Foundation
Jyoti Bansal
Harness
10:00 am - 10:30 am

Follow the Token: Trace AI Costs to Business Outcomes

Token-level attribution is the only way to build an AI ROI case that finance and engineering can both stand behind. Learn how leading teams are tracing spend from raw token consumption to measurable business outcomes before the spend spirals.

Jet Semrick
Cursor
Swapna Samuel
BMO
Zach Johnson
Cisco
Patrick Brogan
Harness
10:30 am - 11:00 am

Governed by Design: Building the FinOps Operating Model AI Spend Demands

Before you can govern AI spend, you have to be able to govern cloud spend. FinOps leaders from global financial institutions share what it actually takes to build the operating model that makes cost governance work before AI spend demands it.

Linde-Marie Ferreira
ABSA
Mark Cullen
Temenos
Adam Westgarth
Harness
11:00 am - 11:30 am

Fix the Foundation Before AI Spend Scales

Weak tagging, broken allocation, and misaligned commitment strategies don't just waste money — they make AI ROI impossible to measure. Learn how to close the foundational gaps before AI spend turns a manageable problem into a business one.

Paul Kennedy
iHerb
Sherri Wooldridge
Carnival
Eric Santelices
Solera
Kelsey Rosen
Haness
11:30 am - 12:00 pm

Left of the Bill: When Cost Guardrails Move Into the Pipeline

The highest-leverage moment for AI ROI is the deployment pipeline, not the quarterly review. Engineering leaders share what it takes to move cost guardrails left of the bill — and build accountability into the architecture before it gets locked in.

Mark-David McLaughlin, Ph.D.
InterSystems
Sagar Veerla
TransUnion
Sanjay Nagaraj - Moderator
Harness
12:00 pm - 12:30 pm

What Every Token Is Really Buying You: From Smaller Bills to a Faster Yes

Measuring AI spend isn't the finish line. The teams winning on AI ROI use cost visibility as a credential to move faster, not a brake to slow down. This session is about what happens when you can account for every token and what you actually do with that.

Jeff Merlin
Harness
Eric Lam
Google Cloud
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm