FinOps for the Enterprise Intelligence Platform: Controlling Query Costs, AI Costs, and Everything in Between

FinOps for the Enterprise Intelligence Platform: Controlling Query Costs, AI Costs, and Everything in Between

Most data teams know their platform bill is climbing. Almost none can answer the follow-up: why, and who owns it? Query costs, cluster spend, and now AI query costs, have historically lived in separate systems, making cost accountability nearly impossible to enforce. The new admin experience in Starburst, named Starburst Console, powered by AIDA, changes that. 

This session introduces a unified FinOps approach that covers all three cost dimensions in one view: traditional query workloads, cluster-level spend, and the emerging cost of AI-powered queries through AIDA. You’ll see how the new experience attributes costs by team, workload, and query type, including which AIDA interactions are driving the most consumption, and how to use that visibility to optimize, chargeback, and govern AI spend before it becomes a budget conversation you weren’t prepared for.

You’ll leave with:

• A FinOps framework for query engines that now includes AI: how to think about cost attribution across traditional and AI-powered workloads
• A live walkthrough of the new unified cost + usage view in Starburst, including how AIDA query costs appear alongside standard compute spend
• A chargeback model you can bring back to your organization, covering both data and AI consumption in one report