65% of employees at companies already using AI say they'd roll it back. 42% say they spend more time correcting AI output than the tool is supposed to save them. This week Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan dig into what that gap actually costs, why CEE seed-stage investors are getting priced out of their own market by mega-funds writing checks ten times the usual size, and what Mistral AI's $3.5B round at a $24B valuation says about who's actually positioned to win the AI capital race in Europe. Plus the one number worth asking for before you sign off on the next AI budget.

Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.

If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email [email protected].

Ninety four percent of CEOs plan to keep increasing AI spend this year. Only sixty percent are actually confident it'll pay off. This week Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan dig into why that gap exists: the seventy percent of AI cost that never shows up on an AI line item, the board math that's still built for a world where spend and outcome move in a straight line, and the CEE companies that bought the tool before they found the problem. Plus why Ford and Commonwealth Bank of Australia had to publicly reverse AI-driven layoffs, and why the CFO is quietly becoming the person who has to answer for all of it.

Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.

If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email [email protected].

Gartner puts 2026 global AI spend at 2.59 trillion dollars, up 47% from last year, and in the same breath forecasts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects get canceled by the end of 2027. This week, Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan trace the connective tissue between those two numbers: why most companies can't attribute AI cost to a specific workflow once pilots hit production, what that looks like once it scales into agent sprawl (West Monroe's 550+ internally built agents, Blackline's "hundreds," Microsoft's 500,000+), and the four-step measurement discipline that separates an AI initiative you can defend in a board meeting from one that just becomes part of next year's unexplained bill.

Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.

If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email [email protected].

AI budgets are under real scrutiny, but the reckoning nobody predicted for midyear never arrived, it just got quieter. This episode breaks down why AI costs spike the moment a pilot connects to real workflows, what Bulgaria's Graphwise proved when Oakley Capital bought a majority stake, why Exadel's CDAO says token usage is the wrong success metric, and the market data on why smart buyers skip the frontier model. Voices in this episode are digitally rendered. New episodes every Thursday.

If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email [email protected].

Every AI initiative gets approved on a promise. Few can prove, months later, that it paid off, in numbers a board will actually sign off on. Show Me the ROI is the weekly show for C-suite leaders and PE operating partners driving AI adoption in CEE mid-market firms, breaking down what AI adoption actually costs, what it returns, and where the numbers get quietly rewritten. Voices in this episode are digitally rendered. New episodes every Thursday.