AI Gateway, LLM Observability, or AI Spend Governance: What Each Layer Actually Does
The AI cost tooling category is fragmented and confusing. Here's the honest map — what gateways do, what observability does, what spend governance does, and how the three stack together.
May 2, 2026 · Spendline · FinOps, tooling, architecture
AI COGS vs R&D: A CFO's Decision Tree for Classifying AI Spend on the P&L
How to classify AI spend on the income statement — when inference is COGS, when fine-tuning is R&D, and the edge cases where reasonable people disagree. A practical decision tree for finance leaders.
May 1, 2026 · Spendline · finance, accounting, FinOps
The AI Month Close: How Finance Teams Reconcile LLM Spend Like Any Other COGS Line
A practical guide to closing the books on AI spend — what makes it hard today, the four-step process modern finance teams use, and the controls auditors will eventually expect.
May 1, 2026 · Spendline · finance, month close, FinOps
LLM Unit Economics: A Working Model for AI-Native B2B SaaS
The classical SaaS unit-economics framework breaks when AI inference is a variable cost of revenue. Here is the model that replaces it — cost per request, contribution margin per customer, and what 'healthy' looks like.
May 1, 2026 · Spendline · finance, unit economics, FinOps