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AI FinOps Agent

Controls model spend with routing, caching and per-workload budgets.

40–70% lower cost per AI interaction at constant quality

The problem. Inference cost is the line item nobody forecast: spend scales with adoption, the biggest consumers are invisible, and the reflex fix — a cheaper model everywhere — quietly damages quality.

The agent attributes every call to a workload, team and business outcome, so cost per interaction is a number the business can manage.

It routes each request to the cheapest model that passes the quality bar, applies prompt and response caching, and enforces per-workload budgets.

Quality is measured alongside cost, so a saving that degrades answers is caught rather than celebrated.

Before

A single large bill with no attribution, and cost decisions made without quality evidence.

After

Cost per interaction is measured, budgeted and optimised with quality held constant.

Reference architecture

Where this agent sits in the stack.

A modular stack that separates experience, orchestration, models and data — so use cases ship independently without a rebuild each time.

Business experienceSystems of record
  1. 01

    Experience & copilots

    Web, mobile, CRM, service desk and Microsoft 365 surfaces where employees and customers meet AI — embedded in the tools they already use.

  2. 02

    Orchestration & tooling

    Prompt and agent orchestration, tool calling, routing between models, retries, fallbacks and cost/latency budgets enforced per workload.

  3. 03

    Model layer

    Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI, Anthropic and open-weight models behind a common gateway with routing, caching and spend controls.

  4. 04

    Knowledge & retrieval

    Chunking, embeddings, vector and hybrid search, permission-aware retrieval and citation so every answer is traceable to an approved source.

  5. 05

    Data & integration

    Event streams, APIs, lakehouse and CDC pipelines connecting the stack to ERP, CRM, HCM and the core systems of record.

Integration surface

  • Model gateway or provider APIs
  • Cloud billing and cost data
  • Agent runtimes for workload tagging
  • Evaluation harness for quality checks

Guardrails & human oversight

  • No routing change ships without passing the evaluation set.
  • Per-workload budgets with alerting and hard stops on runaway spend.
  • Every action outside policy stops at a reviewer queue with the agent's reasoning, evidence and proposed change attached.
  • Cost and quality are always reported together, never separately.

What has to be true first

  • Model traffic flowing through a gateway or otherwise instrumentable.
  • An evaluation set to protect quality during routing changes.
  • Agreed workload tagging so cost can be attributed.

Security, data & compliance

  • Runs under a dedicated service identity with least-privilege, per-tool scopes — never a shared admin account.
  • Customer and employee data stays inside your tenancy and region; no training on your data by default.
  • PII is redacted before it reaches a model, and prompts, responses and tool calls are retained under your retention policy.
  • Every tool call, input, decision and system write is logged and replayable for audit and model-risk review.
Rollout

How this agent reaches production.

  1. Weeks 1–2 · Scope

    Traffic and spend baseline, workload tagging model, quality bar agreed.

  2. Weeks 3–6 · Build

    Gateway routing, caching, budgets, attribution dashboards and CI quality gate.

  3. Weeks 7–10 · Production pilot

    Top workloads optimised with before/after cost and quality reporting.

  4. Quarter 2+ · Scale & run

    All workloads governed, with monthly FinOps review and forecasting.

Measurement plan

What we agree to be measured on.

Ranges drawn from comparable production engagements. Your baseline is agreed before build starts, and the same numbers are reported after go-live.

MetricExpected range
Cost per AI interaction40–70% lower
Spend attributed to a named workload95%+
Quality change during optimisationHeld flat on the evaluation set
Forecast accuracy on monthly AI spendWithin 10%

Model the business case: AI Run Cost calculator →

Production pilot

Top workloads instrumented and optimised with a before/after cost and quality report.

Fixed-price scope · milestone billing · price on request.

Scale & run

Enterprise AI FinOps practice with budgets, forecasting and monthly governance reporting.

Retained pod · quarterly outcome review · price on request.

Agent specification

The full AI FinOps Agent specification, as a PDF.

A multi-page specification your architecture, security and procurement reviewers can read without a call: what the agent does, the architecture, the integration surface, autonomy and guardrails, security posture, rollout plan, measurement plan and engagement shape.

  • Process before and after, with the decision that stays with a human
  • Layered architecture diagram and named integration surface
  • Guardrails, approval gates, escalation and audit trail
  • Security, data handling and compliance posture
  • Phase-by-phase rollout and the measurement plan
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Delivered with this playbook

The FinOps playbook for LLM + CCaaS spend

How to control LLM and CCaaS spend before it controls you. Token analytics, model routing, license rightsizing, telephony minute optimization and a board-level cost dashboard you can copy directly.

Read the playbook →
Related use cases
Price on request

Get a written estimate for the AI FinOps Agent.

Tell us the process, the systems it touches and the compliance scope. We come back with a scope, a measurement plan and a written estimate — no published band that would not apply to you.

solutionAI FinOps Agent — routed to this team

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