EY is standing up the EY AI Value Realization Office, a new corporate function designed to centralise AI spending decisions and ensure the technology delivers measurable returns across the firm’s operations. Dan Diasio, EY’s global consulting AI leader, told Business Insider the office is expected to be fully operational within a couple of months.
The move responds to a structural problem that has quietly accumulated as AI investment has grown: spending on the technology does not sit neatly inside any single department. It cuts across IT, finance, sales, HR and operations simultaneously, making conventional budget allocation a poor fit.
Why departmental budgets leave AI value on the table
Diasio put the problem plainly. ‘If you fund by department, you end up addressing a bunch of use cases inside of each of the functions. And what that often means is that you’re leaving a lot of value on the table,’ he said. EY-Parthenon research underpins that concern: 75% of the potential enterprise value from AI comes from horizontal value streams, meaning initiatives that span multiple functions, compared with just 25% from projects contained within a single function, Diasio said.
The AI Value Realization Office is intended to fix that misalignment. Its remit covers governing AI spending, driving returns, monitoring usage, deciding which AI initiatives to scale, and overseeing how AI reshapes jobs. Critically, Diasio said the office will assess value not just on a dollar-for-dollar calculation but on a broader measure of whether AI initiatives are actually changing business performance. It ‘will help make sure that funding flows where the biggest opportunities are,’ he said.
EY draws a deliberate parallel with how other corporate functions came into being. Modern HR departments emerged during the Great Depression as companies sought more systematic ways to manage hiring and dismissals. Treasury teams took shape in the 1970s, when floating exchange rates made currency movements a material risk for multinationals. The AI value realization office, in EY’s framing, is the contemporary equivalent: a set of responsibilities currently scattered across finance, technology and other teams, now consolidated into a strategic function in its own right.
Token costs sharpen the commercial case for the EY AI Value Realization Office
The timing is not incidental. As AI providers have shifted their pricing models, professional services firms face pressure to use the technology efficiently and contain costs. EY has already implemented what it describes as an ‘invisible’ AI router behind some of its specialised AI tools. The router directs employees to the most suitable model for a given task, and has helped reduce token consumption by 60% since its implementation in April, alongside other governance strategies.
Client pressure is building along the same lines. Many organisations began by experimenting with AI while providers subsidised some of the expense. Now they are confronting the real price tag as they move to scale, and they are asking EY how to organise themselves accordingly. In an EY US AI Pulse survey released in July, conducted between April and May, 98% of 534 senior decision-makers said token spending had made them reconsider their approach to AI.
So far, Diasio said, companies have generally covered AI costs by tightening budgets across the board and reallocating money. A dedicated governance function with genuine authority over spending, as opposed to a working group or a committee sitting inside an existing department, is what EY sees as the next stage. Giving AI governance more clout will be a ‘critical part’ of how EY’s clients move forward, Diasio said.
EY positions itself as ‘client zero’ for the AI future: by testing the technology internally, the firm generates the operational evidence it needs to advise clients. In 2023, EY said $1.4 billion went toward building the foundation for its EY.ai platform. Most clients are not yet setting up dedicated AI offices of their own, Diasio acknowledged, but he expects that to change. ‘It’s something that I imagine over time will become a function,’ he said. ‘The focus is beginning to shift more toward what the organisation looks like on the other side of this.’