Send us Fan Mail Recorded on 30 September 2026, this episode of "What’s New in Cloud FinOps" brings together Frank Contrepois and Stephen Old for a comprehensive roundup of the latest developments across AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and Alibaba Cloud. With a significant focus on the rapidly evolving world of Generative AI cost management, sustainability, and cloud governance, this instalment was recorded live from the GreenIO Conference foyer in London. Expect a lively, candid flow with real-time analysis. Generative AI & Machine Learning Cost Control The episode kicks off with major updates for Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, and other cloud AI offerings. Amazon Bedrock Agent Core Payments (GA): A key discussion point is that agents can now autonomously discover, access, and pay for paid APIs and content. This presents a major governance challenge, risking unmanaged spend and fragmented cost visibility. The hosts stress the need for spending caps, approval workflows, per-agent budgets, and unified cost aggregation.Amazon Bedrock Cost Allocation & Anomaly Detection: Bedrock now supports IAM principal cost allocation, allowing organisations to track usage back to specific users and roles in the CUR. Additionally, AWS Cost Anomaly Detection now covers third-party Foundation Models like Anthropic's Claude.Bedrock Pricing (OpenAI GPT-5.6): Promotional pricing is available at $4/million input tokens and $20/million output tokens (a claimed 20-33% reduction), valid through at least 21 November 2026.Amazon SageMaker: A new guided, low-code/no-code path in SageMaker Studio simplifies finding cost-effective inference configurations for custom models.Google Cloud BigQuery: Introduced preview monitoring for data agent performance, latency, and conversation costs through Google Cloud observability.Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): August's AI update expanded hardware choices and on-demand inference for Cohere and Meta models.Calculating AI ROI: Frank highlights an AWS article by Adam Richter on presenting AI return on investment. Steve recalls a previous podcast with Adam discussing a Cornell "levelised cost of AI" study, emphasising the need for measurable value.From AI Pilots to Production: The hosts discuss how many AI pilots run too long without a clear "exit to value" plan. Frank’s workshops focus on defining proof-of-value criteria and graduation paths to production. Research shows 59% of organisations report increased AI spend wastage, while only 31% have accurate visibility.Commitments, Pricing Models & The New "SAM" Challenge A clear trend is the application of traditional cloud commitment models to AI services, creating new challenges where FinOps and Software Asset Management (SAM) collide. Google Cloud: Introduced flexible, spend-based Savings Plans for Gemini Enterprise (10% for one year, 20% for three years) and a forthcoming "deferred execution" option offering up to a 50% discount for non-urgent jobs.Alibaba Cloud: Launched AI Savings Plans for Model Studio on 28 August 2026, with discounts up to 47%. They also introduced batch inference pricing at a 50% discount.The FinOps/SAM Collision: Models like Gemini Enterprise and Azure Copilot Studio blend per-user subscriptions with pay-as-you-go agent workloads. This creates a challenge in determining who owns which piece of the cost and how credits and commitments apply across teams.Hidden Risks & Governance Gaps Third-Party AI EULAs: Stephen highlights a critical risk: when a user accepts the End-User License Agreement (EULA) for a third-party model (e.g., Anthropic on Bedrock), they could be binding their entire organisation to the provider's standard terms without legal or procurement oversight.Intellectual Property Risk: Frank points to a recent HBR article discussing how the "how" of AI usage—the prompts and methods—may not be protected, potentially exposing valuable IP.Cloud Infrastructure & Cost Management Updates AWS Compute:R9g/R9gd instances (Graviton 4): AWS claims up to 25% better compute, but Frank's analysis shows an 8-25% price uplift. FinOps takeaway: benchmark workloads before migrating.ECS fractional GPU scheduling: ECS now supports fractional GPU allocations on EC2 g6f, ideal for right-sizing smaller ML/AI workloads and improving utilisation.ElastiCache on Graviton 4: Offers ~40% higher throughput and ~31% better price-performance, but with higher memory costs.AWS Database & Analytics:Aurora Serverless: Can now scale to 12 ACU in ~1 second, reducing the need for high steady baselines, but requiring guardrails to prevent cost spikes.RDS for SQL Server BYOM: "Bring Your Own Media" is extended to more regions, requiring careful audit documentation.Oracle AI Database on AWS Exascale: Oracle Exadata DB Services now generally available via AWS, signalling evolving multi-cloud coexistence.AWS Glue 6.0 GA: A ~30% price reduction and runtime upgrades (Spark 4.1, Python 3.13) offer immediate savings opportunities.AWS Glue Data Quality: Anomaly detection is now free with an improved "observation mode".Amazon Kinesis: Can now deliver data directly to S3 in Iceberg format, potentially lowering delivery and query costs.AWS Billing & Lambda:AWS Data Exports: Now supports SQL-based row filtering at the source to create pre-filtered reports.AWS Billing Managed Dashboards: An official, pre-configured version of the popular open-source Cost Intelligence Dashboards.AWS Lambda: Recursive loop detection is now available in all commercial regions, reducing the risk of runaway bills.Google Cloud:BigQuery: Offers cost-effective cross-cloud connections (preview) but restricts Graph processing to Enterprise/Enterprise Plus editions.Billing Reports: A new "originating products" filter helps trace costs back to their source.Semantic Tags: A preview feature to automatically propagate application context to resources for better cost allocation.Storage Rapid Cache: Now allows selective ingest filtering to reduce expenditure.Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI):Autoscaling for Red Hat OpenShift: New capability driven by licensing alignment with Red Hat/IBM.Service Limits: OCI has streamlined the service limit increase experience in the console.Sustainability Updates New Availability Zones: New zones in London (EU-West-2D) and Las Vegas seem focused on AI training, raising questions about sustainability trade-offs.Google Cloud Carbon Methodology: A refresh offers more granular certificates and hourly electricity matching for better precision.Green Software Foundation: The "Beyond Watts" paper encourages evaluating environmental impact beyond just electricity consumption.Productivity AI Amazon Q for Microsoft 365: Now generally available for Excel, Word, etc., bringing AI into daily workflows but raising data governance questions.Referenced Resources & Links Frank’s instance price/performance comparison tool: https://aws.frankcontrepois.com/comparisons/
