The Cost Singularity
The bill that learned to grow on its own
You do not feel yourself cross the event horizon. The distance between 'useful experiment' and 'infrastructure we cannot imagine working without' is traveled in small, reasonable steps. Each step makes sense in isolation. The aggregate is a bill that nobody authorized, nobody can predict, and nobody wants to be the person who turns off.
Symptom
Spend crosses the horizon before anyone can veto. Loved systems resist cost cuts hardest. It feels like a chat window — not a capital commitment. Dead pilots vanish; live runs earn fans.
Why It Matters
The Cost Singularity is what happens when successful AI adoption meets absent cost governance. The pilot works. The team loves it. Usage grows. Nobody notices the unit economics shifted three months ago because the model provider changed the pricing tier and the dashboard still shows the old rate.
What the Chapter Gives You
How to spot the event horizon before you cross it, the governance that keeps AI spend from becoming a gravity well, and why the most dangerous cost is the one everyone defends.
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