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Skyler Thomas & Carolyn Newmark


SKYLER THOMAS is Cake's CTO and co-founder. He is an expert in the architecture and design of AI, ML, and Big Data infrastructure on Kubernetes. He has over 15 years of expertise building massively scaled ML systems as a CTO, Chief Architect, and Distinguished Engineer at Fortune 100 enterprises for HPE, MapR, and IBM. He is a frequently requested speaker and presented at numerous AI and Industry conferences including Kubecon, Scale-by-the-Bay, O’reilly AI, Strata Data, Strat AI, OOPSLA, and Java One.

CAROLYN NEWMARK (Head of Product, Cake) is a seasoned product leader who is helping to spearhead the development of secure AI infrastructure for ML-driven applications.

Illustration showing stacks of money in an AI system
Thought Leadership Governance Cost Management

You Can't Forecast AI Costs in Tokens

Skyler Thomas & Carolyn Newmark

Here's a prediction: your team will miss its AI cost forecast this quarter.

Published 12/25 6 minute read
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Governance Cost Management

The Case for Smaller Models: Why Frontier AI Is Not Always the Answer

Skyler Thomas & Carolyn Newmark

Frontier models are incredible. They are also overkill for 80% of what enterprise teams use them for.

Published 12/25 3 minute read
An illustration representing shadow AI
Governance Cost Management

Shadow AI: The Silent Budget Killer Inside Every Company

Skyler Thomas & Carolyn Newmark

Your AI spend doubled last quarter. Your engineering team swears they’re only using approved models. Yet somewhere between those approved workflows...

Published 12/25 6 minute read
Illustration of a robot holding stacks of cash money
Voice Agents Agentic RAG Agents Customer Service Agents & Chatbots Cost Management

The Hidden Costs Nobody Expects When Deploying AI Agents

Skyler Thomas & Carolyn Newmark

AI agents are now everywhere on roadmaps. They plan, reason, call tools, retrieve context, and complete multi-step tasks with a degree of autonomy...

Published 11/25 4 minute read
Money flying away from a tech project.
Cost Management

The AI Budget Crisis You Can’t See (But Are Definitely Paying For)

Skyler Thomas & Carolyn Newmark

AI spend is increasing across every organization, yet most teams still cannot answer the simplest operational question: What does our AI actually...

Published 11/25 4 minute read