Your AI strategy is burning cash because you treated it like a feature.

AI is not a feature. It is a capital expense.

I see too many roadmaps right now that are just lists of “GenAI” integrations. The product team adds a chatbot, pats themselves on the back, and ignores the cloud bill.

This is bad business.

When I look at AI strategy, I don’t look at the prompt engineering. I look at the unit economics.

The Math is Brutal: If you add an LLM call to your core loop, you just increased your COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) on every single user interaction.

If the answer is “we don’t know,” you are driving the company off a cliff.

I treat AI implementation with the same scrutiny as hiring a new department. We need to see the P&L impact before we write the code.

Innovation without economic viability isn’t strategy. It’s charity. And we are not in the charity business.

One Question For You: Have you calculated the exact cost per query of your new AI feature, or are you waiting for the CFO to yell at you?

Richard Ewing is a Product Executive and the creator of The Product Economist framework. He serves as a Strategic Advisor to B2B SaaS organizations, helping leaders audit their roadmaps for capital efficiency and prevent “model collapse” in their business models.

Stop guessing. Start auditing.

#AIStrategy #SaaSEconomics #ProductStrategy #TechLeadership #UnitEconomics

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