Metrics that Measure Up
Ray Rike
AI to ROI is a podcast that shares how enterprises translate AI investments into measurable business value. Hosted by Ray Rike, Founder and CEO of Benchmarkit, the show features senior enterprise leaders and AI software executives who share how AI initiatives move from pilots to production, and how ROI is actually measured and achieved. In addition, each week, we publish a bonus episode with AI to ROI Newsletter co-author, Peter Buchanan to discuss the Big Story of the Week. The AI to ROI…
Recent Episodes
Building an AI-First organization with Francis Brero, VP AI and Strategy HG Insights
Sep 16, 2026Francis Brero, VP of AI and Strategy at HG Insights, discusses building an AI-first organization by designing products for agent consumers rather than humans, decomposing work by outsourced task value, and centralizing accountability for leading indicators. He shares how HG Insights transformed from a legacy data provider shipping files to customers into an agent-native platform using MCP protocol, implemented product-led growth, and restructured internal processes to measure AI ROI through leading indicators tied to business outcomes.
Where Are the Killer AI-Native Application Companies?
Sep 14, 2026Ray Rike (founder, Benchmarket) and Peter Buchanan (managing partner, New Plan) examine why AI-native application companies are losing narrative share to model companies (Anthropic, OpenAI) and SaaS incumbents despite raising billions in funding. They analyze three competitive pressures eroding unit economics—model companies moving upmarket, SaaS incumbents rapidly pivoting to AI-first platforms, and coding agents enabling internal build-versus-buy decisions—and identify five traits separating breakout companies like Harvey, Abridge, EvenUp, and Fieldguide from the rest.
Why every AI conversation should be an ROI conversation - with Ketan Karkhanis, CEO ThoughtSpot
Sep 10, 2026Ketan Karkhanis, CEO of ThoughtSpot, discusses why every AI investment must be grounded in ROI and measurable business outcomes rather than model selection. He outlines how enterprises can use 30-day pilots to evaluate AI value, the importance of tying AI initiatives to functional metrics (NPS, deal size, cycle time) that ladder to income statement impact, and how ThoughtSpot's architecture minimizes token costs through 'LLM thinning' rather than passing unpredictable expenses to customers.
The OpenAI vs Anthropic Battle for the Enterprise
Sep 9, 2026Ray Rike (founder and CO of Benchmarket) and Peter Buchanan (managing partner of New Plan) analyze Anthropic's recent financial milestone—surpassing OpenAI in quarterly revenue and posting its first operating profit—and argue that enterprise AI dominance over the next 24-36 months will be determined by go-to-market execution and partner trust, not a single quarter of financials. They examine both companies' product strategies, distribution capabilities, vertical market plays, and competitive threats from Google, Microsoft, and open-weight models.
Enterprises Can See Their AI Bill, But They Can't Predict It
Sep 3, 2026Ray Rike, founder and CEO of Benchmarket, presents findings from a 396-company research report on AI cost visibility and forecasting. Despite 98% of enterprises claiming to track AI spending and 44% rating themselves as advanced in AI cost management, only 11% can forecast spending within 10% of budget, with 54% missing forecasts by over 26%. The report identifies three distinct AI cost patterns—product AI, workflow automation, and agentic AI—and reveals that data platform costs, not token costs, are the primary driver of budget overruns.
Stripe and OpenRouter Combination Wants to be #1 in Routing your AI Workloads
Sep 1, 2026Ray Rike (founder and CEO of Benchmarket) and Peter Buchanan (managing partner of New Plan) discuss Stripe's $7.5 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, a 6x valuation increase in 85 days. They analyze what this signals about model routing becoming the control point for enterprise token cost governance, the competitive landscape emerging in the AI gateway market, and implications for OpenAI, model providers, and enterprise customers.
AI Cost Governance to AI Cost Optimization with Sundeep Goel, CEO, Mavvrik
Aug 26, 2026Sundeep Goel, co-founder and CEO of Mavvrik, discusses the evolution from cloud cost management to AI cost governance and optimization. The conversation covers findings from Mavvrik's AI cost governance research partnership with Benchmarket, revealing that forecast accuracy has declined to 11% of companies forecasting within ±10% despite rising AI spend. Goel emphasizes the critical need for finance teams to engage in AI cost tracking at granular levels and outlines a framework for measuring AI ROI through total cost attribution and value measurement.
Microsoft is Running an AI Marathon
Aug 25, 2026Ray Reich and Peter Buchanan analyze Microsoft's $450 billion single-day market capitalization gain following stellar earnings, examining the company's AI strategy as a price-performance play rather than frontier model competition. They break down Microsoft's restructured 27% OpenAI stake, in-house Phi model family reducing GPU costs by up to 89%, and deployment of 6,000 forward-deployed engineers converting 70% of Fortune 500 companies into production AI use cases. The discussion covers Microsoft's portfolio strategy balancing partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic against proprietary models optimized for high-volume, lower-complexity workloads.
Can U.S. Frontier AI Labs Survive a Price War with Open-Weight Models?
Aug 18, 2026Ray Reich (founder and CEO of Benchmarket) and Peter Buchanan (managing partner of New Plan) discuss whether U.S. frontier AI labs can survive a price war with Chinese open-weight models following the Kimi K3 release. They analyze the financial sustainability of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Chinese competitors, demonstrating why a real price war would be catastrophic for frontier labs, explain why cost-per-completed-task is the only meaningful metric for enterprise buyers, and provide guidance on model selection beyond headline pricing.
Will the AI Data Center Backlash Really Make a Difference?
Aug 12, 2026Ray Reich (Founder and CEO of Benchmarket) and Peter Buchanan (Managing Partner of New Plan) discuss the emerging backlash against US data center projects, which has blocked or delayed approximately $170 billion in infrastructure investments. They examine how local opposition—driven by concerns about electricity costs, water consumption, pollution, and noise—has become a material financing and scheduling risk for hyperscalers and their third-party capital partners, reshaping the economics of AI infrastructure buildout.
Show artwork and metadata belong to the publisher and are shown here editorially, as part of documenting the corpus behind our analyses. Inclusion does not imply any endorsement of, or by, Parsed Analytics.