FinOps Weekly Podcast

Learn how FinOps is evolving to tackle AI cost management and tokenomics. Discover actionable strategies for prompt engineering, model right-sizing, and cost governance across non-technical teams.

00:00 AI Meets FinOps
00:49 Tokenomics Explained
04:38 Guardrails and Shadow AI
07:11 Measuring Value and ROI
09:56 Volatility Like Serverless
11:59 Prompt Engineering Basics
15:27 Instructions Skills and Context
18:23 Caching and Model Right Sizing
22:29 Training and Showback
28:45 Wrap Up and Future Outlook

How to Choose the Right AI Model on GCP Without Blowing Your Budget in 2025. In this FinOps Weekly episode, we sit down with Bar to break down how to select the best AI model on Google Cloud's Vertex AI (now Agent Platform), balancing pricing, performance, and business use cases.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro to FinOps Weekly & Today's Topic
01:20 - Why AI Cost Management Matters Now
03:20 - AI Availability: Everyone Touches It (Unlike Cloud)
05:20 - Beyond Price: Key Factors in Model Selection
07:00 - Target Audience & Use Case Considerations
09:20 - What is Vertex AI (Now Agent Platform)?
10:50 - Exploring Model Garden & Industry Filters
13:20 - Evaluation Phase: Staging Your Models
15:00 - Newest Model vs Cheapest Model Myth
17:00 - Case Study: Pricier Models Can Cost Less
19:20 - Tokens Aren't Universal: Image/Video/Audio Pricing
20:40 - Input vs Output Token Pricing Ratios
22:20 - The Caching Challenge in LLMs
24:00 - Best Use Cases for Caching
25:40 - Data Privacy & Fine-Tuning for Sensitive Data
28:20 - Risks of Fine-Tuning & Checkpoints
30:20 - RAG as an Alternative to Fine-Tuning
36:40 - Wrap-Up & Closing Thoughts

FinOps Meets SRE: How Site Reliability Engineering Principles Can Transform Your Cloud Cost Management Strategy in 2025.

Discover how key SRE concepts like toil, SLAs, and blameless postmortems can be applied to FinOps practices. In this episode, an SRE-turned-FinOps engineer shares practical advice on automating repetitive tasks, setting cost-based service level agreements, building a blameless cost culture, and handling telemetry data.

Why FinOps for SaaS Is the Biggest Gap in Cloud Cost Management (And How to Tackle It)

Discover why SaaS spend is a black hole in FinOps with no tool to scrape it all into a single pane of glass. In this FinOps X interview, Peter Greenshaw shares actionable tips on building a single source of truth, optimizing licenses, working with procurement, and applying a FinOps mindset to SaaS renewals to cut waste and save money.

00:00 - Intro & Welcome to FinOps X San Diego
00:35 - Peter's Chalk Talk on FinOps for SaaS
01:06 - Why Chalk Talks Are So Valuable
01:23 - The Massive Gap: No Tool Scrapes SaaS Data
02:03 - FOCUS Adoption & Vendor Challenges
02:42 - Too Many SaaS Providers vs AI Vendors
03:11 - Poll Results: How Many SaaS Vendors Do You Have?
03:35 - Licensing Complexity: Concurrent vs Named Users
04:05 - Hyperscalers Are Solid, SaaS Is the Black Hole
04:38 - A Problem Since the 90s That Won't Go Away
05:14 - Tip 1: Build a Central Source of Truth
05:46 - Tip 2: Deep Dives on Big Spend & Contracts
06:07 - Make It Iterative, Not a Once-a-Year Task
06:57 - The Role of Finance & Procurement
08:11 - Offboarding: Stop Paying for Unused Vendors
08:53 - SaaS License Waste & Oversizing
09:37 - The Adobe Example: Match Licenses to Real Use
10:50 - Concurrent License Optimization Strategy
13:21 - Tools for Single Source of Truth (Spreadsheets!)
15:21 - Why Vendors Won't Solve This: An Industry Problem
16:17 - Advice: How to Get the Most Out of FinOps X
17:24 - The Power of Hallway Conversations & Networking
17:45 - Putting Faces (and Legs) to Names

More about FinOps Weekly

Newsletter: https://newsletter.finopsweekly.com/subscribe
Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/finopsweekly/shared_invite/zt-3pfhfat8l-~LgZCTy~1YtK8BZ87_ySPw
20% off on FinOps Certifications. Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at https://www.finops.org/training-certification
FinOps Weekly Courses: https://learn.finopsweekly.com
Collaborations: https://cal.com/smartclouds/finops-weekly

What does the future of FinOps and AI spend optimization look like heading into 2027?

In this interview recorded live at FinOps X in San Diego, we sit down with Zach Johnson to break down the biggest announcements, trends, and challenges shaping the FinOps landscape.

From token economics and AI ROI to data integration, automated dashboarding, and the alignment of engineering and finance, this conversation covers everything FinOps practitioners need to know to stay ahead. Learn why optimizing AI spend before it happens is the next frontier, what Tokenomicon 2027 might bring, and how to get the most out of FinOps X as a practitioner.

00:00 - Intro & Welcome at FinOps X San Diego
01:30 - Token Economics & Tokconomicon Announcements
04:00 - Defining ROI on AI Spend
06:30 - Normalizing Token Costs Across Providers
09:00 - How Data Integration Accelerates FinOps Decisions
11:30 - AI Replacing Manual Dashboards & Reports
13:30 - How to Get the Most Out of FinOps X
15:30 - FinOps Community: Sharing Knowledge & Benchmarking
17:00 - Predictions for AI Cost Optimization in 2027
18:30 - Wrap Up & See You at Tokconomicon 2027

More about FinOps Weekly

Newsletter: https://newsletter.finopsweekly.com/subscribe
Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/finopsweekly/shared_invite/zt-3pfhfat8l-~LgZCTy~1YtK8BZ87_ySPw
20% off on FinOps Certifications. Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at https://www.finops.org/training-certification
FinOps Weekly Courses: https://learn.finopsweekly.com
Collaborations: https://cal.com/smartclouds/finops-weekly

What Every FinOps Practitioner Needs to Know About Using AI to 10x Their Productivity

In this interview recorded live at FinOps X in San Diego, AWS FinOps expert Ricardo shares how he went from barely using AI to making it a core part of his daily workflow — tripling his productivity in just 3 months. From automating cost reports and detecting anomalies to building personal FinOps AI personas, this video covers the real, practical AI use cases that are transforming the FinOps practice today.

00:00 - Intro & Welcome at FinOps X San Diego
01:30 - Ricardo's AI Journey: From Certified to Actually Using It
03:30 - Using AI During Business Cadences for Cost Insights
05:30 - Automating Savings Plans Reports with Claude & CLI
08:00 - AI for Anomaly Detection & Root Cause Analysis
10:30 - AI Trends in FinOps: What's Coming Next
13:00 - Human-in-the-Loop: Fact-Checking & Staying Accountable
15:00 - Prompting Tips & Building Your FinOps AI Context
17:30 - How to Get the Most Out of FinOps X
19:30 - The Power of Sharing Knowledge in the FinOps Community

More about FinOps Weekly

Newsletter: https://newsletter.finopsweekly.com/subscribe
Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/finopsweekly/shared_invite/zt-3pfhfat8l-~LgZCTy~1YtK8BZ87_ySPw
20% off on FinOps Certifications. Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at https://www.finops.org/training-certification
FinOps Weekly Courses: https://learn.finopsweekly.com
Collaborations: https://cal.com/smartclouds/finops-weekly

How to get High Savings with Commitments using a Free FinOps Tool

Are you afraid to lock into a 3-year cloud contract because AI tech changes so fast? Buying on-demand burns your cash, but long commitments can trap your budget. Watch this FinOps X interview with Sarah from Archera to see how to get maximum cloud savings without the long-term risk.


0:00 – The trap of 3-year cloud commitments vs. on-demand pricing.
1:25 – How to get high savings with only a 30-day lock-in.
2:21 – Why the AI boom makes long-term cloud contracts dangerous.
3:50 – How "Guaranteed Commitments" work like insurance for your cloud bill.
5:05 – The Release or Rebate option: Getting a check for unused resources.
7:21 – Case Study: How Art.com saved $471,000 using this model.
8:39 – Why there is no SaaS fee and how to use the free open-source tools.
10:00 – How to get a free cost analysis in 24 hours.

https://www.finops.org/training-certification

Tokenomics & FinOps AI: Managing AI Costs in 2026

How tokenomics is reshaping FinOps in 2026: Ben from Vantage breaks down AI cost management, MCP, AI gateways, agentic workflows, and the new Canvas product launch at FinOps X San Diego.

Learn more about Vantage: https://hub.finopsweekly.com/company/vantage?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=finopsx_interview

Try Canvas at: https://www.vantage.sh/features/canvas?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=finopsx_interview

Learn how to manage and allocate AI and token costs with FinOps in this FinOps X interview. We cover the new Tokenomics Foundation, AI gateways like OpenRouter and LiteLLM, MCP integrations, agentic workflows, and Vantage's new AI-native Canvas product for building cost reports with a single prompt. Essential watch for anyone tracking cloud and AI spend in 2026.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro at FinOps X San Diego
00:58 - Most useful AI features for FinOps
02:28 - MCP support as table stakes
02:48 - Agentic workflows & autonomous agents
02:41 - The Cambrian explosion of AI providers
03:25 - The Tokenomics Foundation announcement
04:11 - Is tokenomics part of FinOps?
05:29 - Supporting customers with token costs
06:11 - Investing in AI before it was a story
07:30 - New providers: Neoclouds & inference
09:23 - Getting visibility first on AI costs
10:32 - AI models as the new EC2 instances
11:51 - Keeping up with constant model updates
13:24 - Standardizing on AI gateways
16:24 - Why gateways help enterprises
18:08 - Vantage's big launch: Canvas
19:54 - Building reports with a single prompt
23:27 - MCP adapters & new use cases
26:00 - What keeps Ben up at night
29:00 - The pace of AI change in FinOps
30:36 - The energy at FinOps X 2026
31:53 - Wrap up & goodbye

More about FinOps Weekly

Newsletter: https://newsletter.finopsweekly.com/subscribe
Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/finopsweekly/shared_invite/zt-3pfhfat8l-~LgZCTy~1YtK8BZ87_ySPw
20% off on FinOps Certifications. Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at https://www.finops.org/training-certification
FinOps Weekly Courses: https://learn.finopsweekly.com
Collaborations: https://cal.com/smartclouds/finops-weekly

The Hidden AI Cost: Why Block Storage is Ruining Your Cloud Bill

Are you buying too much cloud storage for your AI projects? When teams get new GPUs, they often buy double or triple the storage they need just to be safe.

In this FinOps Weekly interview, live from San Diego. Ryan from Datafy reveals why block storage is a silent budget killer. While AWS offers discount plans for compute resources, attached storage has no savings plans. This makes it a top cost on your cloud bill. Ryan shares his insights from working 5 years at AWS. He explains exactly why shrinking a cloud volume is so hard and how to cut the waste with zero downtime.

Stop paying for empty space. Watch to learn the simple command you can run this Monday to see if your file system is sitting empty and wasting your money.

0:00 – The silent block storage cost explosion.
1:02 – Why teams double or triple their AI storage space.
2:13 – The big problem with AWS EC2 and attached storage.
3:50 – How storage waste multiplies across your golden images.
5:35 – Why it is so hard to shrink cloud volumes without losing data.
8:23 – How the AI boom and LLMs force storage costs to grow.
11:21 – The exact Monday morning check you must run to find waste.
12:08 – Ryan's inside view from 5 years working at AWS.

Newsletter: https://newsletter.finopsweekly.com/subscribe
Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/finopsweekly/shared_invite/zt-3pfhfat8l-~LgZCTy~1YtK8BZ87_ySPw
20% off on FinOps Certifications. Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at https://www.finops.org/training-certification
FinOps Weekly Courses: https://learn.finopsweekly.com
Collaborations: https://cal.com/smartclouds/finops-weekly

What's going to happen with FinOps in 2027 explained by an industry Veteran.

The cloud bill is changing fast. Soon, your biggest costs will not be servers, but AI tokens bought by HR and sales. Watch this interview with Erik Peterson at FinOpsX 2026 in San Diego to prepare for Tokenomicon 2027 and protect your budget.

0:00 Live from FinOps X: The massive shift to "Tokeconomics"
03:45 Why HR and Sales are now writing code (and spending your money)
08:20 Tokenomicon vs FinOps X: The big community debate
12:50 AI is coming for your job (Why this is a promotion)
17:35 Cloud waste vs. AI waste: What is the difference?
21:10 The Build vs. Buy trap with AI tools
24:45 Why you need a "Financial Control Plane" right now
28:30 Jevons Paradox: Why cheaper tokens mean a higher cloud bill
30:45 What you must do before Tokconomicon 2027

More about FinOps Weekly

Newsletter: https://newsletter.finopsweekly.com/subscribe
Slack Community: https://join.slack.com/t/finopsweekly/shared_invite/zt-3pfhfat8l-~LgZCTy~1YtK8BZ87_ySPw
20% off on FinOps Certifications. Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at https://www.finops.org/training-certification
FinOps Weekly Courses: https://learn.finopsweekly.com
Collaborations: https://cal.com/smartclouds/finops-weekly