EY's Dan Diasio Says Enterprise AI Costs Extend Beyond Tokens

EY Global Consulting AI Leader Dan Diasio is drawing attention to the costs that build up around AI agents, from infrastructure and safety controls to recovering from failures. EY estimates that an enterprise agent's full cost can be roughly three times its token invoice. The estimate comes from EY's framework for the “total cost of agents,” which counts seven categories: tokens and API calls, subscriptions and licenses, platform infrastructure, governance, organizational change, expected failure and recovery, and potential regulation-related costs. EY's analysis says many companies include only the first three categories in their business cases, while the others often emerge as deployments scale.