EY: Manage Agentic AI Costs Now, Or Pay Later

Enterprises need to act now to manage the costs of agentic AI. The market is moving too quickly for observation. Leaders should focus on three key priorities. First, appoint a Head of Agent Economics. This person will centralize accountability for model usage, cost leakage, and value realization. They will oversee AI and cloud spending across seven line items. Second, install agentic circuit breakers before scaling. This means benchmarking current operations to understand consumption and implementing hard kill switches. These could include spend ceilings and automatic shutoffs to prevent unexpected costs. Finally, embed the full total cost of ownership into the business case upfront. This means including both capital and operating expenditures. It's crucial to capture all costs, like infrastructure and human-in-the-loop expenses, for a transparent view. This helps compare the cost against the expected enterprise value. The bottom line: Proactive cost management is essential for successful agentic AI adoption.