The AI spending spree is over. Here are 5 steps to prepare for the next wave of consumption

For the last two years, many organizations have treated AI adoption as the goal.

The more users, tools and experiments, the better.

Today, leaders are no longer measuring success by adoption alone.

They are asking what it costs, where it creates value and whether the business can afford to scale it responsibly.

That is the next chapter of AI and technology spend management.

The companies that thrive in this environment won't necessarily be the ones consuming the most technology.

They will be the ones that can connect technology consumption to measurable business value.

This shift from maximizing usage to maximizing value, what I call valuemaxxing, is becoming a defining challenge for technology leaders.

Executives who take these five steps now will be prepared for a future where technology consumption and business value must be measured together: 1.

Gain real visibility across the full technology stack Organizations cannot manage what they cannot see.

This becomes far more urgent when costs are variable, distributed and constantly changing.

Today’s technology consumption does not sit neatly in one budget or one system.

It spans SaaS applications, cloud infrastructure, data platforms, AI models, agents and infrastructure.

AI adds another layer of complexity because spend can show up through tokens, credits, model usage, GPU consumption, data movement and AI-enabled applications.