The Cost of Thinking Twice: Why Agentic AI Needs a CFO
Budget. That is the word agentic AI usually discovers after the demo is over. During the demo, the agent searches again. It verifies again. It calls another tool, adds another reasoning step, and produces an answer that feels satisfyingly deliberate. In production, the same behavior becomes less charming. Tokens accumulate, latency stretches, logs become harder to inspect, and nobody is entirely sure whether the last two tool calls were useful or just the machine equivalent of pacing around the room with a clipboard. ...