The world of cloud cost optimization is shifting rapidly, and if last year’s trends are any indication, 2025 is poised to bring even bigger changes to FinOps teams worldwide. As the FinOps Foundation releases its latest findings in The State of FinOps 2024, we’re reflecting on the key takeaways and asking: What should we expect next?
With economic pressures, the rise of AI/ML costs, and sustainability initiatives gaining traction, organizations are rethinking their approach to cloud cost management. Here’s a look at what’s changing – and where we anticipate FinOps will go from here.
Shifting Priorities: From Empowering Engineers to Reducing Waste
For years, the top priority in FinOps has been empowering engineers to take action on cloud costs. However, 2024 marked a major shift: reducing waste and managing commitment-based discounts took the top spot for the first time.
This change isn’t surprising. With businesses scrutinizing every dollar spent in the cloud, optimizing resources and eliminating waste has become mission-critical.
What’s next?
We expect this focus on efficiency and cost-cutting to continue in 2025. However, we may see a resurgence in engineering empowerment – this time with a stronger emphasis on automated optimization tools that reduce waste without manual intervention.
Compute Optimization Still Leads, But Other Areas Are Catching Up
Compute costs continue to be the most heavily optimized cloud spend, largely due to the availability of discount programs (e.g., Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) and third-party optimization tools.
However, last year’s data showed that many organizations are just beginning to optimize other areas – such as storage, databases, containers, and AI/ML workloads.
What’s next?
With AI-driven workloads skyrocketing, we expect more attention on GPU and AI/ML resource management in 2025. As businesses scale AI usage, FinOps will need to shift beyond just compute to optimize these costly workloads.
Forecasting Cloud Costs: A Persistent Challenge
Accurate cloud cost forecasting remains a challenge for many organizations. While manual forecasting adjustmentsare common, more sophisticated forecasting models, such as automated anomaly detection and machine learning-driven predictions—are still lacking.
What’s next?
As tools become more advanced, we anticipate that predictive analytics and AI-driven forecasting will become standard practice. Organizations will invest more in automated cost anomaly detection, allowing FinOps teams to react in real-time rather than waiting for billing cycles to reveal surprises.
AI/ML Costs: A Growing Concern for Large Cloud Spenders
In 2024, AI/ML was a hot topic in FinOps, but only 31% of organizations reported that AI costs were actively impacting their FinOps practices. However, for large cloud spenders ($100M+ annually), that number jumped to 45%.
AI experimentation is in full swing, but cost governance lags behind. Many organizations are now realizing they need clear AI/ML cost management strategies before expenses spiral out of control.
What’s next?
In 2025, we expect to see FinOps teams actively managing AI costs—just as they do for compute. This could mean:
- New FinOps playbooks for AI cost tracking
- More granular cost visibility for AI workloads
- Better AI workload scheduling & rightsizing to reduce waste
The Intersection of FinOps & Sustainability
One of the most exciting trends from 2024 was the increased collaboration between FinOps and sustainability teams. While only 20% of organizations are currently working with sustainability teams, nearly 50% expect collaboration to increase in the near future.
What’s next?
As cloud providers enhance carbon tracking tools, we expect FinOps teams to integrate sustainability into their cost optimization efforts. This means:
- Carbon-aware cloud spending strategies
- More organizations including carbon emissions in their FinOps reports
- Tighter alignment between cost optimization & green computing initiatives
Automation in FinOps: Are We Ready for Full Autonomy?
Automation is on the rise in FinOps, but full automation is still rare. In most organizations, humans are still making final decisions on cloud cost optimizations, rather than letting automation take over completely.
What’s next?
We predict greater trust in automated cost optimization – but with guardrails. In 2025, FinOps teams may start relying more on:
- Automated scaling & rightsizing recommendations
- AI-driven cost anomaly detection
- Auto-adjusted commitment-based discounts
However, full “hands-off” automation will likely remain a long-term goal, as organizations remain cautious about giving AI total control over cloud spending decisions.
Final Thoughts: The Year Ahead for FinOps
As we move into 2025, FinOps teams are evolving from cost trackers to proactive decision-makers. The focus is shifting toward automated waste reduction, AI-driven forecasting, and sustainable cloud strategies.
The question now is: How will FinOps continue to adapt?
- Will AI/ML costs become the #1 optimization priority?
- Will sustainability metrics be a standard part of FinOps reporting?
- Will automation finally take over manual cloud cost management?
At Surveil, we’re excited to see how these trends unfold. What do you expect to see in FinOps this year? Let’s continue the conversation.