Glossary term

Outcome attribution

Linking AI spend and usage to an accountable team, workload, and business result.

Outcome attribution is the step every cost-visibility tool stops short of: not just what AI cost, but what it produced, for whom, and whether that result is verifiable rather than customer-declared. It maps directly to the FinOps practice of allocating cost and ownership before evaluating value. As of this writing, no vendor in the category has fully closed this loop — most either measure cost precisely and stop, or claim an outcome on evidence the vendor itself does not verify.