The Hidden Costs of Untracked AI Usage

AI systems are cheap to start - and expensive to scale.

A handful of pilot agents might only cost a few dollars a day. But as usage grows across departments, without clear visibility and budgeting, costs balloon in the background.

What Happens Without Tracking

When AI is used like an open tap:

Finance teams get surprised by usage-based bills.
Departments lose accountability for their consumption.
IT leaders can’t optimize spend without reliable attribution.

The result? Shadow IT - but with LLMs.

Visibility as a First Principle

Elementive AI is designed to surface usage metrics the way you’d expect from any enterprise system:

Per-agent and per-team cost tracking
Task-level usage insights
Monthly budget dashboards
Alerts and thresholds for overages

You can even allocate costs to departments or projects, enabling chargeback models that keep usage tied to outcomes.

Enabling Confident Scaling

With tracking in place, AI becomes easier to scale:

New teams can adopt it without financial risk.
Executives get ROI clarity on where agents deliver value.
Finance can model future spend based on real trends.

The Foundation for Governance

Tracking is the first step to good governance. When you know what agents are doing, what it costs, and where it happens, you can:

Set limits
Automate approvals
Justify budgets

You move from ad hoc experimentation to operational maturity.

Want to understand what your AI is really costing you? Request a demo.