Glossary term

AI business case

A structured estimate of expected AI costs, benefits, risks, implementation requirements, and strategic alignment.

The document a CFO actually asks for before releasing budget — not a vendor pitch deck, but a named owner's own estimate of what an AI initiative will cost, what it should return, and what could go wrong. FinOps guidance calls for aligning initiatives to business goals and prioritizing use cases this way before funding them, not after.