Our Speakers
Emily Allen
Director of Finance & Accounting
Most finance teams are winging AI budgeting. There are no well-established KPIs, no universal benchmarks, and a new tool comes out every month.
In Finance Friday Ep. 1, CloudZero’s Emily Allen shares how she’s building the rulebook for AI budgeting.
She walks through what’s working, including:
- Nobody has the playbook yet. A year ago, Emily’s AI forecast was $0. Then every team started building with AI. She’s writing the rules as she goes.
- Your AI spend can fall at one vendor while it rises overall. Emily’s Anthropic bill dropped, but total AI spend didn’t. Now, Emily forecasts her whole AI portfolio by team, product, feature, and project.
- AI approvals deserve the same context as T&E. Emily would never blind-approve a flight. Yet AI spend cap increase requests often arrive as a “Yes” or “No” button with no real story behind them.
Ready to build your own AI budget? Try the FY27 AI budget planner, a free Claude skill that gets you to a budget, memo, and board slide. Get it here.
CloudZero, The AI ROI Company, builds the software that shows companies their AI costs by product, customer, and feature, so finance can plan, fund, and defend AI spend with real numbers. Emily uses it every day to build her own forecast.
