Hunter Harris, Pegasystems | FinOps X 2026

In this interview from FinOps X 2026, Hunter Harris, director of cloud FinOps at Pegasystems, joins theCUBE's John Furrier and theCUBE Research's Paul Nashawaty to discuss how FinOps is evolving from cloud cost control into an enterprise-wide discipline for connecting AI infrastructure spend to measurable business outcomes. Harris details how Pegasystems built a granular cost attribution framework before the AI era — mapping spend down to individual microservices, cloud providers and products — giving the team the structural foundation needed to absorb AI workloads as they arrived. When AI spend began scaling unpredictably, that model made it possible to classify costs by purpose: internal productivity, customer-facing products and experimentation. He explains how the team responded by developing what they call "agentic analytics," training AI agents on internal data tables to automate the "why" behind spend shifts and put self-service visibility directly in the hands of engineers and analysts. The conversation also explores Harris's philosophy of FinOps as a "Rosetta Stone" — translating technical cost data into business language across engineering, finance and product teams. At Pegasystems, that meant mapping cloud spend back to revenue at the contract level to reveal per-customer margin and the true contribution margin of cloud infrastructure. Harris advises operational CFOs to invest in a unified data model that connects cloud costs with operational, support, product and revenue data, arguing that trustworthy underlying metrics are the only reliable basis for accurate forecasting and budget guardrails. He also touches on the planned adoption of the FOCUS billing standard, the shift from per-user to token-based consumption as a defining change of the past year and Pegasystems' Blueprint capability, which lets customers describe an application in natural language and have AI generate it on demand. From governing agentic workflows with a human in the loop to positioning FinOps teams as the trusted bridge between AI investment and business outcomes, Harris provides a practical roadmap for how enterprises can mature their cost governance as AI spend scales. Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/ Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/ Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/ 00:00 - Intro 00:06 - Navigating Innovation: Insights and Strategies for 2026 03:16 - Mastering the AI Landscape: Navigation, Utilization, and Contextualization 06:36 - Optimizing Operational Systems with AI Augmentation 09:44 - Transforming FinOps: AI Disruption and Future Innovations #theCUBE #FinOpsX #theCUBEresearch #Pegasystems #FinOps #AI #EnterpriseAI