# Glossary

The vocabulary of AI ROI and tokenomics, written and maintained in-house so it stays consistent across every entry on this site.

## [AI business case](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/ai-business-case/)
A structured estimate of expected AI costs, benefits, risks, implementation requirements, and strategic alignment.

## [AI ROI](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/ai-roi/)
The net financial or strategic value generated by an AI initiative relative to its full cost.

## [AI value](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/ai-value/)
The measurable business value created by AI, including productivity, revenue, cost efficiency, experience, resilience, sustainability, and competitive advantage.

## [AI value pillar](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/ai-value-pillar/)
A category of business value used to classify AI outcomes, such as cost efficiency, resilience, experience, productivity, sustainability, or growth.

## [Business value](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/business-value/)
Tangible and intangible benefits tied directly to organizational objectives, not merely model performance or lower technology cost.

## [Cost per inference](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/cost-per-inference/)
Total inference cost divided by the number of model requests or completed inference operations.

## [Cost per outcome](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/cost-per-outcome/)
The total AI and operating cost required to deliver one acceptable business result — a resolved case, a qualified lead, a completed workflow, an approved document.

## [Cost per token](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/cost-per-token/)
Total model-related cost divided by the number of tokens used or processed.

## [FinOps for AI](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/finops-for-ai/)
Application of FinOps practices to understand, allocate, optimize, and govern AI usage, cost, and business value.

## [Goodput](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/goodput/)
Productive, acceptable AI output that meets quality requirements, as distinct from raw throughput or low-cost but unusable output.

## [Human-in-the-loop cost](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/human-in-the-loop-cost/)
The labor and workflow cost of reviewing, correcting, approving, escalating, or acting on AI output.

## [Incrementality](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/incrementality/)
The portion of an observed outcome that would not have occurred without the AI initiative.

## [Marginal cost of intelligence](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/marginal-cost-of-intelligence/)
The incremental cost of generating an additional useful AI output, decision, or completed task.

## [Model routing](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/model-routing/)
Directing a request to the most suitable model, provider, or serving path based on task requirements and economics.

## [Modeled ROI](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/modeled-roi/)
An estimated return based on assumptions about cost, adoption, output quality, and expected business impact.

## [Outcome attribution](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/outcome-attribution/)
Linking AI spend and usage to an accountable team, workload, and business result.

## [Payback period](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/payback-period/)
The elapsed time for cumulative benefits from an AI initiative to equal its cumulative investment and operating cost.

## [Quality-adjusted ROI](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/quality-adjusted-roi/)
AI return calculated after accounting for output quality, error rates, human rework, safety, and business usability.

## [Realized ROI](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/realized-roi/)
Return actually observed after deployment, rather than a forecast, business case, or vendor estimate.

## [Semantic caching](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/semantic-caching/)
Reusing a prior answer or result for a semantically similar request to reduce repeated model computation.

## [Time to value](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/time-to-value/)
Time required for an AI initiative to produce measurable business value or reach break-even against the alternative approach.

## [Token attribution](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/token-attribution/)
Assigning token usage and associated costs to an accountable application, team, business unit, customer, model, or use case.

## [Tokenomics / token economics](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/tokenomics/)
The discipline of managing how AI tokens are produced, distributed, consumed, priced, allocated, and optimized to create business value.

## [Total cost of ownership](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/total-cost-of-ownership/)
The full lifecycle cost of an AI system: model or API usage, compute, data, tooling, integration, security, operations, and human oversight.

## [Unit economics](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/unit-economics/)
The revenue, value, and cost associated with a defined, measurable unit of a product or service.

## [Use-case economics](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/use-case-economics/)
The total cost of achieving a specific business outcome, measured per unit of that outcome.

## [Useful intelligence per dollar](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/useful-intelligence-per-dollar/)
A quality-adjusted measure of useful AI outcomes delivered for each dollar of spend.

## [Value realization](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/value-realization/)
The process of converting an approved AI investment, pilot, or capability into demonstrated and sustained business results.

## [Value shapes](https://measuredvalue.ai/glossary/value-shapes/)
A framing for classifying AI-driven business value by the shape of its financial pattern, not just its size.