November 2025 FinOps Summit: Optimizing for Value, FinOps for AI Level 2, State of FinOps Survey '26

In the November 2025 Summit, we explore how organizations drive measurable value through optimization, diving into optimization strategies across cloud, data cloud, and AI. Our guest community speakers explain how to approach optimization based on FinOps maturity and solving for speed, quality, and/or cost.

We also cover FinOps Enabled Executive Decisions: the evolving role of FinOps empowering executive decision making to optimize for value and supporting strategic investment decisions across cloud, SaaS, and data center.

Big announcements from the Summit also include the launch of the State of FinOps 2026 Survey, and FinOps Certified: FinOps for AI Level 2.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KG8T6GB
https://learn.finops.org/path/certifi...

Vas Markanastasakis (FinOps Foundation) discusses how optimization priorities evolve as your FinOps practice matures. Sonal Gupta (Carlsberg Group) shares case studies about optimizing on data platforms like Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks etc.. We also hear from Brooke McKim and Rem Baumann (Vantage) on agentic FinOps at work, and from Aviv Revach (Adaptive6) on identifying and removing shadow waste.

We're hard at work as we also kick off preparation for FinOps X 2026, June 8-11, 2026. Tickets and our conference Call for Proposals are both available: https://x.finops.org/

00:00 Highlights
01:31 Introduction
06:23 FinOps X 2026 Registration and CFP OPEN
08:58 FinOps Certified: FinOps for AI Level 2 Available, Natalie Bergman, FinOps Foundation
17:04 Optimizing for Value, Vasilio Markanastasakis, FinOps Foundation
29:42 FinOps in Data Platforms, Sonal Gupta, Carlsberg Group
47:28 Unlocking Proactive FinOps with Agentic Workflows, Brooke McKim & Rem Baumann, Vantage
01:01:21 Detecting and Remediating Hidden Shadow Waste, Aviv Revach, Adaptive6

#finops #cloudoptimization #finopsforAI