Skip to content

AI COST MANAGEMENT

Thinline

 

Control AI Spend as You Scale

Cake centralizes AI spend across your entire stack and enforces decisions in real time through an LLM gateway, budget thresholds, and policy controls.

 

HeroImage (4)

brain-cog

Centralize AI spend data into one system of record

Centralize the full cost of AI across infrastructure, models, tools, and workflows so every team works from the same numbers.

Learn more →

Reduced Risk

Turn insights into
real savings

Identify real savings opportunities from usage data and enforce them directly through routing, budgets, and policies.

Learn more → 

circle-dollar-sign

Explore cost vs. quality tradeoffs before they scale

Understand how model and architecture changes impact cost, latency, and quality using real production data.

Learn more → 

chart-line

Standardize ROI analysis
across teams

Tie AI spend to real workloads so forecasts, assumptions, and outcomes are consistent and defensible.

Learn more →

OVERVIEW

Thinline

 

See the full cost of AI and act on it

AI costs don’t live in one place. They span cloud infrastructure, data platforms, SaaS tools, model APIs, and agent workflows, and most tools only show a single slice. That fragmentation makes it hard to understand true spend, compare tradeoffs, or take action before costs escalate.

Cake unifies the entire AI cost surface into a single system of record and lets teams act directly through configuration, enforcement, and routing. It integrates with your infrastructure to collect cost and usage signals without exporting application data or prompts outside your environment.

UNIFIED AI COST VISIBILITY

A single, trusted view of AI spend

Cake unifies AI cost and usage data into a single system of record mapped to projects, environments, models, and workloads.

  • Unified cost model

    A consistent representation of AI spend across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, models, and SaaS tools.

  • Explainable attribution & drill-downs

    Trace AI spend by project, team, environment, and workload with seamless drill-down from summaries to individual resources.

  • Cost data reporting

    Explore costs freely, save what matters, and reuse standardized reports across teams.

Dashboard, at a glance understanding of holistic cost in real time or close to it Custom Reports

MODEL-AWARE FORECASTING & SCENARIO PLANNING

Evaluate decisions before they ship

Cake lets teams forecast AI spend by workflow or agent and compare model and architecture choices before traffic is shifted.

  • Dynamic forecasting

    Forecast AI spend at the workflow or agent level using shared assumptions across engineering, product, and finance.

  • Model comparison

    Evaluate alternative models in context to understand cost and performance tradeoffs.

  • Cost & latency analysis

    See how routing and architecture changes affect spend and response times before rollout.

Simple Forecast ROI Forecast Dashboard Assumptions LLMs

SAVINGS & OPTIMIZATION ENGINE

Actionable savings, not suggestions

Cake identifies optimization opportunities grounded in real usage and scopes them to specific workloads or use cases, with clear impact before execution.

  • Workload-specific recommendations

    Optimization actions tailored to individual agents, workflows, or use cases.

  • Savings lifecycle tracking

    See expected savings before execution and track potential, applied, and realized impact over time.

  • Built-in execution

    Apply optimizations without custom scripts or parallel tracking systems.

Savings Insights Bar Graph Savings Recommendations Savings History

CONFIGURATION, GATEWAY, & ENFORCEMENT LAYER

Decisions enforced by default

Cake provides a unified execution layer for AI cost controls.

  • Scoped ownership and access

    Align namespaces to teams and projects with identity and access managed through SCIM and RBAC.

  • Cost-aware resource limits

    Apply CPU, GPU, and memory quotas with cost context built in.

  • Request-time enforcement

    Enforce model routing, budget thresholds, and usage limits at request time.

Members and RBAC Configuration Configuration Dashboard Configuration Dashboard (Contd)

AI COST COPILOT

Quickly surface the information you need

Cake provides a shared interface for exploring AI cost, usage, and trends on top of the system of record.

  • Plain-language questions with grounded answers

    Ask natural-language questions and get responses based on saved reports and trusted attribution models.

  • Interactive exploration

    Explore costs across models, services, and workflows with fast, iterative analysis.

  • Early anomaly signals

    Surface unexpected shifts and emerging cost issues before they escalate.

website carousel 2

COMPARE

Thinline

 

One command center instead of five disconnected tools

Model Vendors
(Foundation Models, Cloud Hyperscalers)
AI Inference Providers
Observability Platforms
AI Gateway
Pure-Play FinOps
Multi-vendor cost attribution
Granular cost drill-downs (e.g., teams, projects etc.)
Model quality–cost tradeoff analysis
Predictive/what-if cost analysis
Enforcement & usage policy controls
Finance system integration/export
Developer experience
Key management & auditing
Cost efficiency
Limited/Not Commonly Supported
Not Supported
Good
Better
Best
testimonial-bg
“

"Our partnership with Cake has been a clear strategic choice – we're achieving the impact of two to three technical hires with the equivalent investment of half an FTE."

Customer Logo-4

Scott Stafford
Chief Enterprise Architect at Ping

Read The Case Study
testimonial-bg
“

"With Cake we are conservatively saving at least half a million dollars purely on headcount."

CEO
InsureTech Company

Read the case study
testimonial-bg
“

"Cake powers our complex, highly scaled AI infrastructure. Their platform accelerates our model development and deployment both on-prem and in the cloud"

Customer Logo-1

Felix Baldauf-Lenschen
CEO and Founder

CAKE COST MANAGEMENT IN ACTION

Thinline

 

Cost-governed AI, without slowing teams down

Cake gives engineering, AI, and finance leaders one place to understand, govern, and optimize the cost of every AI workload. Whether you’re scaling LLMs, launching agentic workflows, experimenting with new models, or tightening budgets, Cake ensures you can move fast without losing control.

hand-handing-money-to-another-hand (1)

Cost governance & control

Maintain oversight across AI workloads with a single system of record and enforced guardrails.

brain (1)

LLM & API usage management

Track and govern usage across OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Vertex, and custom models.

gear

Model & workflow optimization

Evaluate models and workflows using real cost, latency, and available quality signals.

beaker

AI experimentation at scale

Support rapid experimentation while enforcing cost and usage guardrails.

money (1)

Financial planning 

Provide finance teams with workflow-level cost data for forecasting, budgeting, & chargebacks.

a-fraud-is-detected-with-a-giant-warning-symbol-ab

Compliance & audit oversight

Maintain auditability and policy compliance across teams, environments, and workloads.

EXPLORE

Thinline

 

Learn more about Cake and AI cost management

Money flying away from a tech project.

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
Illustration of a robot holding stacks of cash money

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
An illustration of a small robot next to a big robot

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

SEE CAKE IN ACTION

Thinline

 

Build and scale AI with total control.

Accelerate every project while maintaining complete visibility, security, and compliance.

  • 3.9x faster deployment: Launch AI systems in record time by automating infrastructure setup, security reviews, and budget enforcement.
  • Detailed cost visibility & forecasting: Gain full transparency into spend, usage, and budgets to cut $1M+ in infrastructure and vendor costs per LLM project.
  • Built-in governance & compliance: Enforce access controls, policies, and spend limits across your entire AI lifecycle—automatically and by default.