Deloitte: North American CFOs Cite AI Cost Concerns

According to Deloitte’s third-quarter 2026 CFO Signals Survey, finance leaders are being asked to approve increasingly significant investments while managing costs that can be volatile and challenging to control, as enterprises continue to scale AI technologies.

The report highlights that many companies could benefit from greater real-time visibility, advanced AI-specific controls and rapid-response capabilities to manage spending effectively when these technologies become fully integrated. 

According to the report, the challenge facing CFOs is not about fund allocation; it’s about establishing cost governance and scaling AI responsibly.

Deloitte’s 2026 CFO Signals Survey polls 200 CFOs from North American organisations, with each company turning over revenues of at least US$1bn per quarter. 

The report’s findings align with the Deloitte Finance Trends 2027 research, which found that many global finance leaders are taking on expanded responsibilities for AI trust, capital allocation and cost management. 

With leaders named in the Finance Trends 2027 report anticipating greater cost and complexity through 2027, finance organisations may need to re-evaluate their approach to AI cost governance.

Finance leaders take on a greater role in AI strategy

Almost 80% of respondents to the CFO Signals Survey suggest that finance has a key role in their organisations’ AI strategies, with 38% defining or administering the evaluation framework and 41% serving as required approvers. 

That figure compares with 20% who provide just cost, budget or accounting guidance but do not influence the overall decision. 

For many finance leaders, these are relatively new responsibilities. The Finance Trends 2027 research found that more than two-thirds of leaders who oversee AI trust, capital allocation or cost management took on an owner or approver role within the past three years.

The importance of AI cost governance and controls is growing. For decades, organisations operated in a seat-based software world built around purchasing licences, deploying tools and measuring adoption. Higher usage meant success because costs remained relatively predictable regardless of how often employees used the technology.

However, now commercial AI providers are more commonly charging per token instead of charging per user seat or at flat rates. Additionally, AI bills can rise quickly due to large context windows or long conversation loops. 

Because of this, finance teams are often under pressure to justify the business value of AI token use.

Discussing AI governance in August with Bloomberg, Ed Hardy, US Finance Services Leader at Deloitte, said: “As organisations think about moving beyond experimenting, they will look to existing controls, but determine what has to be enhanced.”

He added that companies might find that, depending on the use case, existing controls may not be sufficient.

Most organisations still managing AI costs reactively

The report found that many companies evaluate AI spending reactively, as opposed to proactively.

Over half of survey respondents (53%) say their organisations’ primary practice is to review AI usage costs retrospectively through vendor bills, periodic reports, dashboards or manual analysis. 

Fewer than half of respondents say they monitor AI usage costs in or close to real time and actively manage deviations using alerts, dashboards, spending anomaly reviews or budget forecasts.

When asked to indicate how their companies manage AI consumption costs, 80% of surveyed CFOs say that their organisations use less advanced controls. 

More than half (56%) use only basic AI-specific controls, such as usage guardrails, team-level budgets or AI cost attribution, while 24% rely only on general controls, such as existing IT financial operations and budgeting processes.

Key questions for finance leaders

The report highlights that many organisations are still in the early stages of navigating token use with AI technologies and that “it’s important for finance leaders to keep asking hard questions”.

The report concludes by asking finance leaders to consider several points: 

• Is token awareness part of the company’s AI onboarding? 
• Has the organisation set guardrails around experimentation? 
• As new pricing models take hold, what is the company’s vendor cost exposure? 
• How much value does the company get from AI in productivity metrics versus revenue enablement?

Deloitte’s key partners:

IBM: Deloitte and IBM collaborate extensively to deliver hybrid cloud solutions, enterprise AI adoption, systems integration and large-scale digital transformation services.
CEO: Arvind Krishna | Headquarters: Armonk, New York, US

Salesforce: Deloitte partners with Salesforce to implement CRM platforms, improve digital customer experiences, modernise service operations and optimise enterprise sales management.
CEO: Marc Benioff | Headquarters: San Francisco, California, US

SAP: Deloitte works with SAP to modernise core enterprise resource planning, streamline global supply chains and execute complex cloud-based financial migrations. 
CEO: Christian Klein | Headquarters: Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, Germany