Presented by Apptio, an IBM company

AI spending is surging, but the full impact often remains an open question. Closing the gap requires clear answers to how AI is governed, measured, and tied to business outcomes.

ROI uncertainty isn’t unique to AI: In the Apptio 2026 Technology Investment Management Report, 90% of technology leaders surveyed said that ROI uncertainty has a moderate or major impact on overall tech investment decisions, a 5-percentage point year-over-year increase. In other words, tech leaders are increasing their reliance on ROI – even if they don’t fully know how to measure it. And AI economics involves new and unpredictable costs, further complicating ROI calculations. Faced with increasing uncertainty and increasing budgets, technology leaders need a clear, reliable framework for evaluating AI ROI.

Organizations increasingly expect scaled AI to pay its own way, at least partially. According to Apptio’s technology investment management report, 45% of organizations surveyed intend to fund innovation by reinvesting savings from AI-driven efficiencies. That model assumes that such savings are both achievable and quantifiable. Meanwhile, the two-thirds of organizations planning to reallocate existing budget capital to AI will need clarity on the trade-offs involved.

Much like the early days of public cloud, AI costs and returns are difficult to predict. Pricing varies widely across providers and continues to evolve, while consumption is unpredictable. The pressure to adopt quickly is also formidable as organizations navigate the threat of disruption by more agile competitors.

The new math of AI ROI

Considering the many variables, tech leaders should view AI ROI as a matter of optimization. At a high level, the implementation of AI initiatives is inevitable. The question is how to achieve the greatest possible returns — both financial and organizational.

Start with the business problem. There are many ways AI can deliver positive impact, but organizational resources and focus may be limited. Make sure you’re prioritizing the right initiatives by basing your AI investment strategy on quantifiable goals tied to real business outcomes. Are you trying to improve decision-making speed? Increase throughput or capacity? Or chasing cool edge cases with high potential returns but minimal strategic relevance?

Determine what success looks like. AI can introduce a new capability or augment an existing one. For new capabilities, articulate the possibilities you’d like to unlock, such as new revenue opportunities, workflows, or decision-making processes. For augmentations, establish baseline performance and the expected lift you aim to achieve with AI.

Consider how finances will influence your evaluation. Some use cases may show minimal results in the near-term but drive significant value in the long-term. What’s your timeframe for return? On the other hand, more successful rollouts with rapid adoption can generate unexpectedly high inference bills. Would that mean pulling the plug — or leaning in further? What should your cost and return curve look like over the years? As you map your timeline, establish clear thresholds to determine whether you’ll proceed, pause, stop, or accelerate your investment.

Identify the right KPIs. The returns on an AI investment can be even more difficult to evaluate than the costs. Usage, efficiency, and financial impact all matter. But AI success metrics won’t always be straightforward. There may be new usage patterns you don’t yet have a way to measure. Your technology environment may experience follow-on shifts that call for further evaluation. Will you be able to lessen your reliance on other tools, such as reducing seats in your data analytics platform? How will you factor in cross-tool pricing comparisons for multiple AI providers with shifting rates?

To gain full context and insight, you must also take into account the alignment of the initiative with your broader strategy and consider the opportunity cost of the investments you might otherwise have made. Remember that you’re not evaluating AI business value in isolation; you’re deciding whether it’s the best use of finite capital across all your investments.

These decisions will call for a level of insight far exceeding what was needed to justify traditional purchases like network infrastructure or enterprise software. Tech leaders navigating the complexities of AI economics should consider a new framework for data-driven decision-making.

Making AI investment sustainable with TBM

Technology business management (TBM) helps make ROI more concrete and measurable, so it can be relevant to the business. By bringing together IT Financial Management (ITFM), AI FinOps (cloud financial management for AI workloads), and Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), a TBM framework connects financial, operational, and business data across the enterprise.This makes it possible to account for AI value and cost across a wide array of dimensions — and translate hypothetical innovation into board presentations and budget justifications that hold up under scrutiny.

TBM can help leaders build a trustworthy cost foundation that captures AI spend across labor, infrastructure, inference, storage, and applications. As AI workloads shift dynamically, TBM provides visibility into how that spend is distributed across on-premises systems and cloud environments — both of which require different capacity planning for specialized skill sets. The framework also connects investments to business outcomes, aligning AI initiatives with strategic priorities and measurable results. With increased visibility, you’re able to identify issues and make decisions fast, such as catching cost spikes early. Early detection can help to determine if the usage shift merits shifting funding. This unified view of financial and operational data helps leaders scale what’s working and reassess what isn’t as adoption increases. TBM provides essential visibility and context across the entire AI spend management conversation. Even as pricing evolves, tooling changes, and workflows shift, you can apply the same analytical approach and understand what’s actually working and demonstrate ROI. Leaders who operationalize AI within a TBM framework can:

• Evaluate ROI at both project and portfolio levels

• Spot unexpected cost spikes

• Compare multiple AI tools

• Understand ripple effects across run-the-business systems

• Defend investment decisions with confidence

• Understand and manage total costs and usage across the AI investment lifecycle

From theory to practice

Organizations are moving beyond AI experiments, and we’re past the point where these investments can be funded on optimism alone. Amid heightened uncertainty and cost sensitivity, boards are asking more strategic questions and finance wants trustworthy data.

Enterprise leaders who treat AI as a managed investment, rather than a bet on innovation, are those who will scale it successfully. To fund AI responsibly, leaders must establish clarity around scope, outcomes, cost drivers, and readiness. A TBM-driven approach provides the data foundation, visibility, and accountability to make those decisions.

Learn more here about how Apptio TBM transforms IT spend management in the AI era.

Ajay Patel is General Manager at Apptio, an IBM Company.

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from the voter-certainty-be-damned dept

Again, I feel like I’m going crazy here, but the obviously extremely partisan Supreme Court has struck again. I will repeat some of the basics, because it’s hard to believe how blatant all of this is. In November, a (Trump-appointed) judge threw out Texas’s new congressional maps, noting that the Texas state government had made it quite clear it was done for racial reasons, making it a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The judge wrote a detailed 160-page ruling showing how the Trump administration itself had essentially locked in the Texas legislature’s need to draw maps based on race, by threatening them with a civil rights complaint if they didn’t.

The Supreme Court, however, blocked that new map in December, saying that because of the upcoming midterm elections (still months away in December), Texas had to use those new maps (which had only been created in August) because (according to Samuel Alito) Texas voters needed “certainty.” Of course, they could have gone right back to the maps Texas had been using up until August — but somehow that would have shaken things up too much.

Then, a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued its Callais decision, effectively wiping out the remaining bits of the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana immediately declared a state of emergency and sought to throw out the map it had already started using for primary season — to redraw it in a much more racist way. And Samuel “the voters need certainty” Alito helped them along by rushing the certification of the Callais decision.

Now, just a few days later, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has also vacated an even more detailed ruling rejecting maps in Alabama for being racist. The conservative majority claims that this is in light of the ruling in Callais:

The judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in that case is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with instructions to remand to the District Court for further consideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais

Now, that’s already odd for the same reason I raised earlier about the Supreme Court (led by Justice Alito) claiming back in December that they couldn’t overturn Texas’ new map (which has only been announced, and never actually used, months earlier) for the sake of “voter certainty.” Yet here they are issuing a ruling EIGHT DAYS before the Alabama primary.

What the fuck?

It’s bizarre for multiple other reasons as well, including that the Supreme Court already heard a related case regarding the map in Alabama and ruled that it violated the Voting Rights Act (Alito, naturally, dissented). The state went to redraw its map based on that, but the lower court rejected the new maps almost exactly a year ago in an astounding 571-page ruling.

Notably, while that ruling does find that the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act (in multiple ways), it also found that the maps directly violate the Fourteenth Amendment (this discussion is towards the end of that 571-page ruling, so perhaps Alito and the other conservative Justices didn’t read that far?). And, as much as the Court believes it can invalidate the Voting Rights Act, it cannot invalidate the Constitution.

So we have a ridiculously thorough 571-page district court ruling — finding that the maps violate not just the VRA but also the Fourteenth Amendment — and the conservative majority just waves it away. Yet the conservatives on the Supreme Court — the same group who said no last-minute map changes for “voter certainty” — just ordered that clearly discriminatory, unconstitutional map into use, because of how they changed their interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.

But, as Justice Sotomayor points out in her dissent, that would totally ignore the Fourteenth Amendment part!

At the end of that trial, the District Court concluded “with great reluctance and dismay and even greater restraint” that Alabama had not merely spurned the opportunity to remedy past discrimination, but in fact had intentionally violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Given that, the ruling in Callais could only possibly impact the VRA part of the lower court decision. Not the Fourteenth Amendment bit. But the majority on the Supreme Court just ignores that.

Nothing in the District Court’s Fourteenth Amendment analysis is affected by this Court’s opinion in Callais. Most obviously, Callais changed the legal standard for vote-dilution claims under §2. See 608 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19) (“[W]e must understand exactly what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands”). It said not a word about the standard for Fourteenth Amendment intentional-discrimination claims like the one that the District Court decided on remand in round two.

Even worse, Sotomayor points out that in Callais itself, the majority had claimed that the earlier 2022 ruling regarding the Alabama maps (where they said it violated the VRA) remains good law. But this new ruling clearly contradicts that claim.

Callais also insisted that this Court’s prior decision in Allen remains good law. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 36) (“[W]e have not overruled Allen”). These cases are, of course, Allen. So if Allen is good law anywhere, then it must be good law here. This Court’s finding of racially discriminatory vote dilution is an inextricable, permanent feature of this case, and Alabama’s willful decision to respond by entrenching rather than remedying that dilution is, as the District Court correctly recognized, evidence of discriminatory intent

So, was Alito lying a week and a half ago when he said that Allen was still good law? Or did he just change his mind now, because he’s decided that he needs to proactively strip Black voters of their franchise for the sake of helping Republicans get a few more seats in the House?

And John Roberts wonders why people claim the Supreme Court is “partisan.”

Sotomayor also points out the ridiculousness of doing this a week before the election:

Even if Callais had something to say about the evidence necessary to establish discriminatory intent, it still would not be appropriate to vacate the decision below at this time. That is because Alabama’s congressional primary election is next week, and vacating the District Court’s injunction will immediately replace the current map with Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan until the District Court acts, even though voting has already begun. Vacatur is an equitable remedy, and the Court should not lightly wield it to unleash chaos and to confuse voters.

Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed that she didn’t point to Alito’s “voters need certainty” claim for refusing to block Texas’ new maps back in December.

There is no good-faith reading of these events. Alito said Allen was still good law — then acted as if it wasn’t, twelve days later and eight days before an election. He said voters need “certainty” — then vacated a 571-page ruling finding unconstitutional discrimination with a week to go before Alabama’s primary. And the majority just waved away the Fourteenth Amendment finding entirely, as if they simply didn’t notice it was there.

John Roberts keeps insisting the Court isn’t partisan. At some point, the gap between that claim and what the Court actually does becomes its own kind of answer.

Filed Under: 14th amendment, alabama, john roberts, racism, redistricting, samuel alito, sonia sotomayor, supreme court, texas, voting rights act

from the hollow-performative-populism dept

Flimsy and corrupt authoritarian populism is dedicated to pretending that the oligarchs and autocrats really care about the people. One way Trumpism has done this is by pretending they actually care about reining in corporate power. That’s included an elaborate, multi-year performance about how MAGA Republicans were going to curb abuses by “big tech” and bring back meaningful antitrust reform.

As we’ve warned and witnessed repeatedly, that’s always a lie. The Trump administration has relentlessly dedicated his second administration to devastating whatever was left of regulatory autonomy, consumer protection, and antitrust reform. If MAGA is taking aim at a company it’s almost always either to harass them for doing something Trump doesn’t like, or to help benefit a billionaire ally.

Texas AG Ken Paxton is no exception. Every so often Ken likes to take a break from fueling dangerous conspiracy theories and harassing trans people to pretend he’s being tough on corporate power. Ken’s latest gambit is a new lawsuit against against Netflix for… monetizing streaming advertising viewer data and creating “addicted” users:

“Netflix’s years-long bait-and-switch has led the company right to where it promised never to be: addicting children and families to its platform, mining those users for data, and then converting that data into lucrative intelligence for global advertising juggernauts.”

Granted Netflix is not unique here. In a country too corrupt to pass meaningful privacy laws (because MAGA Republicans just like Ken routinely work to kill them), nearly every company you interact with on a daily basis now monetizes your every movement and online choices, “anonymizes” it (a meaningless term), sells access to dodgy international data brokers, then repeatedly lies about it.

They do this because Republicans, corporate lobbyists, and many “centrist” Democrats have, quite unsubtly, worked tirelessly to dismantle corporate oversight and regulatory autonomy. Most companies have been eager to take advantage, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who, like countless other CEOs, used to at least pay empty lip service to never tracking or monetizing consumer data.

Paxton’s lawsuit insists Netflix has built a vast surveillance economy that includes peoples’ kids viewing habits, violating Texas consumer protection law:

“Netflix built this surveillance machinery to scrutinize how users and their children behave—what they click, how long they linger, what they avoid, when they pause, what draws them in, what they replay or skip, where they are, what devices they use, what other devices are in their home, what other apps they interact with, and much more. Each action is a data point revealing something about the user. This is not simply about deciding what show to queue up next.It is about learning who the users and their children are.”

Again: almost every single company you interact with does this now. Many in ways that are far worse than Netflix (see: the entire unregulated data broker economy). Paxton knows this. So why single out Netflix? And why now?

Well, Netflix has been a recent thorn in the side of Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison’s efforts to acquire Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. Starting earlier this year, Trumpland made Netflix public enemy number one, pushing a pretty broad misinformation campaign targeting the company. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley went before Congress to accuse them of “pushing trans ideology.” More recently, Paramount has been trying to blame Netflix for all the negative criticism of their giant, terrible Warner Bros merger.

These sorts of lawsuits take a while to build momentum, so I suspect Paxton’s inquiry began during the mad conspiratorial heat of MAGA’s Netflix breakdown earlier this year, and is only culminating now. And I suspect Paxton will be eager to share any juicy and harmful tidbits found during trial prep to help frame the company (which in reality has been pretty amicable toward Republicans and trans bashing comedians) as a useful “woke” culture war prop.

That’s not to say Netflix doesn’t do anything wrong and isn’t (like every tech company) abysmal on surveillance and privacy, but it is to say that authoritarians don’t actually care about the public interest. And they certainly don’t actually care about mass commercialized surveillance, given they’ve played a starring role in cementing it and eliminating all accountability for it.

The American public’s broad and growing hatred of corporations and the extraction class has long been a fertile recruitment playground for autocratic zealots like Trump and Paxton, who love to put on adorable little stage plays where they pretend to be “reining in corporate power” and “embracing meaningful antitrust reform.” But it’s uniformly a performance always driven by ulterior motives.

If guys like Trump and Paxton actually cared about consumer privacy, they’d openly and loudly support a national privacy law that holds all companies (and executives, personally) accountable for privacy and security failures when it comes to consumer data. If they cared about consumer privacy, they’d relentlessly target data brokers that sell oceans of consumer data to any nitwit with a nickel (including foreign intelligence). They’d fund and staff U.S. regulators tasked with policing privacy abuses.

They don’t do that because that might impact them and their friends financially, and disrupt the U.S. government’s ability to spy on Americans without a warrant. So instead you get these highly selective and flimsy populist performances that single out administration “enemies” for failing to adequately bend the knee, while tricking rubes into thinking they’re being tough on corporate power.

Filed Under: ken paxton, privacy, regulations, state law, streaming, surveillance, texas, video

Companies: netflix