Tools

AI Cost Recovery Calculator

The AI Cost Recovery Calculator prices how much of your annual AI spend is recoverable, using the 6 Cost Layers: API, Infrastructure, Tooling, People, Waste, and Risk. You enter the spend you can see. The calculator derives the layers no invoice shows and returns an annual recovery figure. Each layer is classified the way a diligence memo would treat it (GATE, PRICE, THESIS, or LEVER).

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What is the AI Cost Recovery Calculator?

A self-serve estimator that prices how much of your annual AI spend is recoverable across the 6 Cost Layers: API, Infrastructure, Tooling, People, Waste, and Risk. Each layer returns its own dollar figure and a deal action (GATE, PRICE, THESIS, or LEVER), so the output reads as an operating agenda instead of a cost report.

What are the 6 Cost Layers?

The six places AI money goes, with their share of total AI spend: API costs at 25%, Infrastructure at 15%, Tooling at 5%, People at 40%, Waste at 10%, and Risk at 5%. The first three have High or Medium visibility because they arrive as invoices. The last three have Low or Very Low visibility and together account for 55% of spend. That is why most cost programs never touch them.

Why does the estimate cover layers I did not enter any spend for?

Because almost nobody can produce those numbers on request, and pretending they are zero would understate the estate by more than half. Leave People, Infrastructure, or Tooling blank and the calculator derives them from the framework's own share-of-spend figures using your API spend as the anchor. Waste and Risk are always derived that way, since no organization invoices them separately. Where you enter real figures, the calculator uses them instead.

Conventional optimization already cut our AI bill. Why run this?

Conventional work concentrates on Layers 1 and 2, the two that arrive as invoices. That leaves the 55% of spend in People, Waste, and Risk untouched. Working all six layers puts first-year recovery at 20% to 34% of total AI spend. The framework's governance step compounds that at 20% to 30% year over year. That is how the framework's illustrative scenarios reach 35% to 57%. This calculator prices the first year from your own posture answers, so a well-run estate returns a smaller figure than a neglected one. The split between Layers 1 and 2 and the rest shows which layers to work on first.

What do GATE, PRICE, THESIS, and LEVER mean?

The four deal actions CCA assigns every finding. GATE means resolve or protect before close. PRICE means it changes the offer. THESIS means it changes what the value-creation plan can achieve. LEVER means it is a quantified opportunity for the hold period. Risk is classified as GATE, Waste as PRICE, People as THESIS, and the three invoice-backed layers as LEVER.

How accurate is the estimate?

It is an educated estimate, not an audit. The layer shares and savings ranges come from the CCA AI Cost Optimization Framework, corroborated where public data exists: Flexera on cloud waste, CloudZero on AI cost tracking, IBM on breach cost and shadow AI, published Anthropic and OpenAI caching and batch pricing. Use the conservative figure for planning and treat the rest as upside to verify against tagged invoices.

How is this different from the Agent ROI Calculator?

It answers a different question. The Agent ROI Calculator prices what a new AI investment would return, so it shows where the next dollar should go. This one prices which dollars are already being wasted. Run both if you have AI spend and an automation roadmap: this one finds budget, and the Agent ROI Calculator shows where to spend it.

Does this work across a portfolio?

Yes. The recovery repeats in every portfolio company with AI spend. The framework's own portfolio math puts $1.8M of annual savings on $10M of EBITDA at roughly $9M of enterprise value at a 5x multiple, with no new revenue. The asset worth building at fund level is the tagging and governance capability that finds the number the same way in every company.