ROI Maxxing Case Study: The Alchemy of Shipping Faster, Proving AI Value, and Controlling Token Cost

Every AI initiative now has to answer one question: what did we get for the spend? That question is harder than it sounds: ROI is part measurement problem, part organizational problem, and many teams struggle with both. This talk gives AI engineering leaders and technical executives a working playbook: how to define AI ROI so it survives a budget review, which infrastructure choices actually move the number, and how to run initiatives that ship fast without becoming a token-cost surprise. We'll walk through a real, anonymized case study end to end to go beyond theory, and into actionable practice.