Pilots, risk, strategy, shadow use.
Every enterprise rents the same models at the same collapsing prices. What separates working AI from theater is not where it sits on the org chart but whether anyone holds the authority to kill a use case.
Shadow AI is a governance gap, not a malice problem. Competent employees close a capability gap under time pressure with tools that leave no artefact, and data that enters a training run cannot be deleted.
Why AI pilots that work still create no value — the four gates where the money leaks, told through documented programs from MD Anderson to Klarna.
The problems that actually cost enterprises money and expose them to risk are structural and unglamorous — unpredictable unit economics, data-governance regimes built for a…