London

June 2–3, 2026

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September 15–16, 2026

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November 9–10, 2026

Accounting or accountability? Avoiding cost drift in the age of AI

You’ve heard of configuration drift, now cost drift could be the answer to your cloud bill woes.

Ben Linares and Jennifer Riggins

Date & time

17:00

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The last three years have been a rich time for experimenting with AI tools and models, but the finance team is coming for you. Do you know the cost of your AI sprawl? And are your engineers still leaving cloud instances running into the night?

Cost drift is when your infrastructure spending deviates from your planned or code-defined state. It’s a useful way to track unexpected spending, but it can also help drive better accountability and quality in software teams, especially when introducing more unpredictable AI-driven elements.

Learn alongside these FinOps Foundation members about how to promote an engineering culture of transparency and accountability for quality, efficiency, and velocity, down to the feature level.

Key takeaways:

  • A ‘zero drift’ culture bridges the gap between engineering and business teams
  • To leverage automation and governance within the CI/CD pipeline for proactive cost management
  • Visibility changes engineering behavior and empowers at the team level

panelists:

Ben Linares

FinOps Advisory Director
Harness

Moderator:

Jennifer Riggins

Freelance Tech Journalist