Meridian FinOps — Cloud and AI spend, under control.
Your cloud bill just got harder. AI workloads don't behave like compute.
Embedded FinOps leadership for the AI era — governing cloud and AI spend together, with the visibility and accountability your finance team actually needs.
Retainer engagements are selective — by invite only
FinOps Top Tips on YouTubeCloud Cost Assessment
A full audit of your cloud and AI spend — waste, savings opportunities, and a prioritised roadmap covering both traditional compute and AI workloads. Delivered in week one.
Tagging & Visibility
Build the tagging strategy and cost allocation model that makes FinOps possible at scale.
Rightsizing & Waste Elimination
Systematic identification and remediation of idle resources, oversized instances, and forgotten services.
Commitment Strategy
Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and spot strategy — the playbook for locking in savings without locking in risk.
FinOps in Practice — Course Coming Soon
75% OFF for early adoptersWhat We Do
Senior expertise.
Without the overhead.
Meridian FinOps engagements are embedded, selective, and outcome-driven. You get the experience of a senior practitioner without the cost and risk of a full-time hire.
Apply for an EngagementCloud Cost Assessment
A full audit of your cloud and AI spend — waste, savings opportunities, and a prioritised roadmap covering both traditional compute and AI workloads. Delivered in week one.
Tagging & Visibility
Build the tagging strategy and cost allocation model that makes FinOps possible at scale.
Rightsizing & Waste Elimination
Systematic identification and remediation of idle resources, oversized instances, and forgotten services.
Commitment Strategy
Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and spot strategy — the playbook for locking in savings without locking in risk.
FinOps Automation
Build the AI-assisted workflows that make cost governance self-sustaining — anomaly detection, automated rightsizing, and AI-powered forecasting.
AI Cost Governance
Establish visibility and control over your AI spend — LLM token costs, GPU utilisation, inference economics, and model selection strategy. The discipline that 98% of FinOps teams now need.
FinOps Practice Design
Build a FinOps function from scratch — ownership model, tooling, governance, and team enablement.
The Practitioner
15 years inside cloud.
Now in your corner.
Lee Wagner has spent 15 years inside the FinOps tooling companies that defined the discipline — Cloudyn (acquired by Microsoft, became Azure Cost Management), Spot.io (acquired by Flexera), Zesty, and Strategic Blue. He is a FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP), Certified TBM Executive (CTBME), and Technical Reviewer of 'Hello FinOps' (BPB Publications). He speaks at FinOps X 2026 and advises OpenOps, the open-source FinOps automation project. His current focus is the intersection of FinOps and AI — helping organisations govern cloud and AI spend together, before the AI bill becomes unmanageable.
17,000+ followers on LinkedInFinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP) — FinOps Foundation
15 years inside FinOps tooling: Cloudyn (acq. Microsoft) · Spot.io (acq. Flexera) · Zesty · Strategic Blue
Technical Reviewer — Hello FinOps (BPB Publications)
Speaker: FinOps X 2026
Certified TBM Executive (CTBME) — TBM Council
Strategic Advisor — OpenOps (open-source FinOps automation)
YouTube: FinOps Top Tips channel
Retainer Pricing
Fractional leadership. Fixed monthly investment.
Engagements run on a monthly retainer. No long-term lock-in. Cancel with 30 days' notice.
Get the relationship working
Assess
For companies that need visibility and a clear FinOps roadmap.
Build a systematic motion
Optimise
For organisations ready to execute on savings and build governance.
Scale globally
Transform
For enterprises building a full FinOps practice with embedded leadership.
Also available: one-off strategy workshops and audits. Enquire.
FinOps in Practice
A Practitioner's Framework for Cloud and AI Cost Management
14 modules. Built from 15 years of practitioner experience — available to early adopters at 75% off the full launch price.
What You'll Learn
Build a FinOps function from scratch in 90 days — with the right ownership model, tooling, and governance.
Cut cloud waste systematically — rightsizing, commitment strategy, and automation that sticks.
Make cost a first-class engineering metric — without slowing your teams down.
Produce executive-ready reporting that gets finance and engineering aligned on the same number.
Govern AI spend — understand LLM token economics, GPU cost drivers, and how to apply FinOps principles to workloads that don't behave like traditional compute.
Course Modules
What FinOps Actually Is
And why most teams are doing it wrong — the three generations of cloud cost management.
Getting Visibility
Tools, tagging, and the truth about your bill — how to see what you're actually spending.
Building a Tagging Strategy That Sticks
The governance model that makes cost allocation work across engineering and finance.
Rightsizing
How to cut waste without killing performance — the framework Lee has used across 15 years.
Commitment Strategy
Reserved Instances and Savings Plans — the playbook for locking in savings without locking in risk.
Automation Frameworks
Crawl, Walk, Run — the three-mode automation model for FinOps teams.
The Organisational Problem
Who owns cloud cost? How to build accountability without creating friction.
FinOps for Engineering Teams
Making cost a first-class metric — without slowing your teams down.
FinOps for Finance Teams
Forecasting and budgeting cloud spend — the framework finance actually needs.
Building a FinOps Practice from Scratch
The 90-day plan — from zero visibility to a functioning FinOps operating model.
Executive Reporting
How to produce the reporting that gets finance and engineering aligned on the same number.
The Future of FinOps
AI workloads, GenAI FinOps, and what comes next — including the OpenOps generation and the tools reshaping cloud cost governance.
FinOps for AI Workloads
Why AI spend doesn't behave like compute — GPU cost drivers, LLM token economics, inference vs. training costs, and how to apply FinOps principles to GenAI.
AI Cost Governance in Practice
Building the governance model for AI spend — tagging AI workloads, establishing unit economics (cost per inference, cost per token), and producing AI cost reporting that finance can act on.
Early adopter price — locked in forever.
Register your interest now. Payment link sent by email within 24 hours.
Who This Is For
Cloud engineers and architects who own the infrastructure but not the bill
FinOps practitioners who are self-taught and want a structured, practitioner-validated framework
Finance leaders who need to understand cloud spend well enough to challenge it
Engineering managers whose teams are being asked to 'do FinOps' without any guidance
Glossary
Key terms, clearly defined.
The language of Meridian can be opaque. Here are the terms that matter — explained with the depth a practitioner needs.
FinOps
1 of 20 terms
Financial Operations for cloud — a cultural practice and operating model that brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud. Defined by the FinOps Foundation as 'the practice of bringing financial accountability to cloud spending'. FinOps is not a tool or a team — it is a cross-functional discipline that requires engineering, finance, and leadership to operate together. The FinOps Foundation's State of FinOps 2026 report (1,192 respondents) identifies AI cost management as the #1 capability gap across the profession.
Financial Operations for cloud — a cultural practice and operating model that brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud. Defined by the FinOps Foundation as 'the practice of bringing financial accountability to cloud spending'. FinOps is not a tool or a team — it is a cross-functional discipline that requires engineering, finance, and leadership to operate together. The FinOps Foundation's State of FinOps 2026 report (1,192 respondents) identifies AI cost management as the #1 capability gap across the profession.
20 terms
FAQ
Common questions
Work With Lee
Engagements are selective. Apply for an invite.
Meridian FinOps works with a small number of clients at any one time. Tell us about your situation — if there's a fit, we'll be in touch within 48 hours.
Book a Call
Request an Invite
By invite only. Engagements are selective — we work with a small number of clients at any one time.