EY Establishes New Office to Control AI Spending

Artificial intelligence doesn't fit neatly into any single existing department — which is why EY, one of the "Big Four" major audit and consulting firms, is building an entirely new function of its own. The company is setting up a new unit called the AI Value Realization Office to centralize AI-related spending and ensure the technology delivers measurable results.

Dan Diasio, EY's global AI leader for consulting, told Business Insider that the office is expected to be fully operational within a few months. Its mandate covers managing AI costs, improving return on investment, tracking usage levels, deciding which AI initiatives to scale up, and monitoring how artificial intelligence is reshaping jobs.

Most companies allocate their budgets department by department. But Diasio points out that AI spending — and the returns it's expected to generate — cuts across IT, finance, sales, HR and operations alike. "When you fund things by department, you end up solving isolated use cases within each function. That often means a lot of value gets left on the table," he said. According to research by EY-Parthenon, 75 percent of the corporate value AI can generate comes from "horizontal" workflows spanning multiple functions, while only 25 percent comes from projects confined to a single department.

Creating a new corporate function to manage rising costs or emerging risks is hardly a new idea. Modern HR departments emerged during the Great Depression, when companies were searching for systematic ways to hire and lay off staff, while corporate treasury departments took shape in the 1970s, when floating exchange rates turned currency movements into a bigger risk for multinational companies. The AI Value Realization Office follows the same logic — pulling together responsibilities scattered across finance, technology and other teams into a single strategic function.

The Big Four firms like to position themselves as the "first customer" of the AI-driven future: they test the technology on their own staff and processes first, then sell clients advice on doing the same. EY announced in 2023 that it was investing $1.4 billion in its EY.ai platform. Behind some of its specialized AI tools, the company has rolled out an "invisible" AI router that directs employees to the most suitable model for each task — a system that has helped cut token consumption, the unit used to measure AI query usage, by 60 percent since April.

Of the 534 senior decision-makers who took part in EY's AI Pulse survey in April and May, 98 percent said token costs had forced them to rethink their approach. According to Diasio, most clients have not yet set up a dedicated AI office, but he expects the function to become widespread over time: "The focus now is shifting more toward what the organization will look like on the other side of this process."