Truth boundary
This is not a US AI startup client case study, not a testimonial, not a savings result, not runway-extension evidence, not investor-relations advice and not legal, privacy, security, tax, accounting or compliance advice. AICS does not claim SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO, FinOps certification, cloud-provider partnership, funding approval, margin improvement, uptime improvement, AI accuracy, ranking, revenue or guaranteed savings.
Use this before the review when
Finance sees invoices, not owners
Cloud, LLM, GPU and observability costs exist, but board-ready rows lack named product, engineering, finance and shutdown owners.
AI experiments became recurring spend
Notebook, demo, evaluation, fine-tuning, batch inference or agent workloads are still running without a documented production, research or stop decision.
Tool decisions need evidence
The team is debating CloudZero, Vantage, native cloud dashboards, LLM observability, internal dashboards or consultants before agreeing what evidence is missing.
Claims need proof discipline
Savings, runway, margin, ROI or customer profitability claims should wait until baseline, action, owner and measurement evidence exists.
Board-review evidence checklist
| Evidence row | Board-safe question | Owner needed |
|---|---|---|
| Spend-source inventory | Which AWS accounts, Azure subscriptions, GCP projects, Kubernetes namespaces, LLM vendors, GPU providers, vector databases and SaaS invoices are included or excluded? | CFO or finance lead |
| AI workload classification | Which costs are production, demo, customer trial, research, evaluation, fine-tuning, agent, retrieval, observability or idle? | CTO or engineering lead |
| Product and customer allocation | Which rows map to product line, customer segment, environment, contract stage or strategic bet? | Founder or product lead |
| Risk and data boundary | Which exports or screenshots are safe to share, and which secrets, personal data or regulated information must be redacted? | Security, privacy or legal adviser |
| Decision queue | Which items need tagging cleanup, shutdown review, architecture review, commitment planning, vendor review, tool purchase, specialist advice or no action? | CFO and CTO together |
| Proof log | What baseline, action date, production change and follow-up measurement would be required before making any savings or runway claim? | Founder, CFO and board sponsor |
One-page review agenda
- Open with evidence boundaries: sources included, sources missing and advice areas reserved for qualified specialists.
- Show the top AI/cloud cost drivers by owner, product, environment and decision status.
- Separate immediate hygiene work from architecture, vendor, commitment and platform decisions.
- Assign each action a named owner, due date, risk note and next-review date.
- Record what cannot yet be claimed because proof is missing.
Copy/paste intake worksheet
Use this worksheet before sharing files with AICS or any adviser. Keep secrets, personal data and regulated information out of the first pass; use redacted exports or screenshots unless a qualified owner approves broader sharing.
| Field | Prompt | Safe first-pass answer |
|---|---|---|
| Review deadline | When is the founder, CFO, CTO, investor or board review? | Date, time zone and decision meeting owner. |
| Included systems | Which cloud accounts, LLM vendors, GPU providers, Kubernetes clusters and observability tools are in scope? | System names only; no credentials, tokens, keys or private URLs. |
| Top spend drivers | Which five services, workloads or vendors need explanation first? | Monthly amount bands, product or environment, and named internal owner. |
| Decision needed | What decision is the review meant to support? | Tagging cleanup, shutdown, architecture review, vendor/tool review, commitment planning or no-action evidence. |
| Proof boundary | What claims are not yet safe to make? | List any savings, runway, margin, ROI, uptime, security or customer-profitability claims that still lack baseline and follow-up proof. |
| Redaction gate | Who must approve broader sharing? | Finance, security, privacy, legal, accounting or engineering approver names/roles. |
Need a board-safe owner pack instead of another spreadsheet debate?
AICS can turn buyer-provided exports, invoices and screenshots into a fixed-scope AI/cloud spend review pack with owner, evidence, boundary and decision queues.
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