— Finance-native · Systems builder —

Diana Molski · Cloud & Capital

I build tools that catch cost problems before they compound.

Practitioner-built. Finance-first.

Cloud, SaaS, and AI infrastructure spend rarely become expensive at the invoice. I build FinOps tools and decision systems using AI, and I share the process as I go — the agent workflows, the prompts, what works, what breaks. I also write about markets and how economic signals show up in cloud budgets.

C&C · TECHNOLOGY SPEND INDEX
Illustrative — Market Tape →
98%
Of FinOps practices
managing AI spend
$1T+
Global public cloud
spend, 2026
Day 1
When cost decisions
actually matter
10
Tools shipped
Cloud Cost Guard FinOps Weekly Los Angeles AI Infrastructure Economics Unit Economics Commitment Strategy GPU Economics Visibility → Variance → Tradeoffs SaaS Rationalization Finance × Engineering Markets & Mimosas The Decision Layer Pre-invoice View Cost-as-Design Build vs Buy Analysis Technology Spend Strategy The Stack Report Cloud Cost Guard FinOps Weekly Los Angeles AI Infrastructure Economics Unit Economics Commitment Strategy GPU Economics Visibility → Variance → Tradeoffs SaaS Rationalization Finance × Engineering Markets & Mimosas The Decision Layer Pre-invoice View Cost-as-Design Build vs Buy Analysis Technology Spend Strategy The Stack Report

The cost problem isn't visibility.
It's timing.

01
The invoice is already too late.
Commitments compound before invoices arrive. Architecture choices, vendor agreements, reservation logic — none of these wait for the finance team. By the time a report surfaces the number, the decision behind it is already old.
02
Cost is a design input, not a report.
The teams getting this right aren't doing more analysis. They built cost into the decision itself — before the architecture review, the vendor commitment, the roadmap sign-off. The report comes later. The decision doesn't.
03
Finance and engineering need one language.
When engineering and finance share the same cost model, decisions happen in one meeting instead of three. No translation layer. No waiting for the next sprint review to find out what something actually cost.
What changes
Cost gets modeled early, before commitments start to compound.
Utilization becomes a core operating metric, not an afterthought.
Architecture decisions carry explicit economic tradeoffs.
Finance and engineering work from a shared cost language instead of translating after the fact.
−23% $2.1T 30% −18% +0.4σ $847M YoY −23.4%
LIVE·MARKET SIGNAL
04:18:22 UTC
Cloud & Capital

Real-time tech infrastructure pricing · Updated every 30 min

Tools that ship.
Tools that catch cost before it compounds.

Dashboard · AI Analyst · Live
Cloud+ Cost Guard
+ Lumen
Multi-cloud cost tracking with Lumen analyzing spend patterns across AWS, Azure, GCP, and SaaS tools. Turns messy billing data into clear cost signals.
View live dashboard → FOCUS 2026 · Claude API
Lumen analysis
What’s bleeding money right now?
EC2 is hemorrhaging cash — you had a 154% spike on Feb 4th, jumping from $482 to $1,226 in a single day. That’s a critical anomaly and your biggest cost driver at $7,421 (40.5% of cloud spend).
Second concern: 19 unused SaaS licenses are burning $242/month. Slack alone has 8 ghost seats at ~$11 each, and GitHub has 7 unused at ~$5 each.
Your AI spend is also creeping up (+12.4%, now $892), mostly from GPT-4o at $512. If you're not actively optimizing prompts or batching requests, you're leaving money on the table.
What triggered that EC2 spike on Feb 4th — did you launch new instances, or is something autoscaling out of control?
Current cost shape
Tech spend by scope
A second signal beside the conversation. Allocation, concentration, and where the real weight sits.
Cloud infrastructure88.1%
SaaS tools7.6%
AI / LLM4.3%
Open Source · Pipeline
The Six-Tool Pipeline
Open-source FinOps toolkit covering the full FinOps Foundation 2026 framework.

FinOps Lite · Watchdog · Recovery Economics · AI Cost Lens · SaaS Analyzer · Command Center

All MIT licensed. CI on every push.
View on GitHub →
Interactive · Tool
Market Tape
AI-powered market dashboard — Lumen researches live data across indices, sectors, commodities, and crypto, then generates analysis connecting market signals to infrastructure decisions. Built for FinOps teams and traders.
Launch Dashboard →
Interactive · Tool
Signal Audit
Five-minute diagnostic that surfaces where cost enters your decision chain.

Built for finance leaders and engineering managers who suspect the problem is upstream.
Take the Audit →
Interactive · Tool
Interactive Lab
Reframe decisions from FinOps, Finance, or Engineering lens.

GPU commitments, SaaS renewals, build-vs-buy. AI structures the tradeoffs before the meeting.
Open Lab →
About

Finance-native.
Systems builder.

I came from Morgan Stanley — client side, Series 7 and 66 — where I spent years watching how people with capital think about risk and where to put money. Now that lens points at tech spend: cloud, AI infrastructure, SaaS. The cost decisions that shape your bill start long before the invoice arrives.

That same lens now carries into cloud economics, AI infrastructure, and FinOps, where cost is shaped inside decisions rather than observed after the fact.

I'm also a parent, which means time is never theoretical. Every system I build has to earn its place — either it saves time or it doesn't ship.

"Most teams still see cost after it happens. The real work sits earlier, inside the decisions that create it."

Morgan Stanley · FinOps Practitioner · FOCUS Analyst · AWS Cloud Practitioner · Azure AI Fundamentals

FinOps Weekly
Los Angeles

In collaboration with

A meetup for FinOps and cloud practitioners in Los Angeles. In person, no vendor pitches.

Get Notified About Next Event
April 9, 2026 · Hawthorne, CA · Vol. 01
Using AI to Put the Ops in FinOps
Common Space Brewery · South Bay.
Our first LA FinOps Meetup brought finance, engineering, and cloud practitioners together for an informal evening on FinOps, AI, and the operating work behind modern technology spend.
Featuring sessions from Ulta Beauty and Wiv.ai on real world FinOps and AI in practice.
Sponsored by Wiv.ai
Using AI to Put the Ops in FinOps poster
August 2026 · Vol. 02 · Coming Up
Next Event — Details TBA
Next event coming August 2026. Date and location TBA.
From the community
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Writing

Markets explained.
Decisions sharpened.

Markets & Mimosas · Latest
Going Public
The AI stack is going public. The pre-IPO pricing window for enterprise AI is closing.
Read latest →
Markets & Mimosas
If your AI and cloud bill is growing faster than your
visibility into it, let's talk.
Get in Touch → Take the Signal Audit