FinOps X 2026: Everything You Need to Know

Sponsoring · June 8–11, 2026 · Marriott Marquis, San Diego, CA

FinOps X 2026 is the largest FinOps conference in the world — four days of keynotes, practitioner-led sessions, chalk talk workshops, and networking with 2,500+ cloud financial management leaders. The conference is organized by the FinOps Foundation and takes place June 8–11, 2026 at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina.

Finout is a proud sponsor. This guide covers everything you need to know: what the conference is, who's there, what's on the agenda, what the key themes are, and what Finout is bringing to San Diego.

This is part of a series of articles about FinOps. 

Related content:

• Read our guide to FinOps Tools

• Read our guide to FinOps Principles

What Is FinOps X?

FinOps X is the annual flagship conference of the FinOps Foundation — the non-profit that defines the standards, certifications, and practitioner community behind the FinOps discipline. It is the largest gathering of FinOps professionals globally, bringing together practitioners, finance leaders, cloud architects, and technology vendors to share real-world case studies, debate best practices, and advance the discipline.

FinOps X 2026 is the conference's most substantive program yet, reflecting a discipline that has fundamentally expanded in scope: from cloud cost management to full technology value management across cloud, AI, SaaS, data platforms, licensing, and on-premises infrastructure.

Key facts:

• Dates: June 8–11, 2026
• Venue: Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina, San Diego, California
• Attendees: 2,500+ cloud financial management leaders
• Speakers: 263 confirmed speakers from companies including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, MetLife, SAP, ExxonMobil, PayPal, Canva, Lyft, Equifax, Fidelity, Atlassian, and more
• Registration: x.finops.org/register

Why FinOps X 2026 Matters

The State of FinOps 2026 report — based on 1,192 respondents representing over $83 billion in annual cloud spend — documents a discipline at an inflection point. The numbers tell the story clearly:

• 98% of FinOps teams now manage AI spend, up from just 31% two years ago. AI cost management is now the single most desired new skill among practitioners.

• The FinOps mandate has expanded beyond cloud. 90% of teams manage SaaS spend, 64% manage software licensing, and 57% manage private cloud or data center costs.

• 78% of FinOps teams now report directly to the CTO or CIO, reflecting how far the function has moved up the org chart. Teams with executive sponsorship demonstrate 2–4x more influence over technology investment decisions.

• Cloud efficiency dropped 15% year-over-year, with the primary cause being AI workloads growing faster than organizations can track and govern them.

• The FinOps Foundation updated its mission statement in 2026 — from "Advancing the People who manage the Value of Cloud" to "Advancing the People who manage the Value of Technology" — formalizing FinOps as a discipline for all technology spend, not just cloud.

What's on the FinOps X 2026 Agenda

The full agenda is live and organized around five program pillars. Here's what's on the slate.

Theme 1: FinOps for AI

Managing AI spend is the dominant topic of 2026. Sessions tackle token-based workload allocation, inference cost quantification, ROI governance for LLM deployments, and the unique challenge of agentic AI systems that can multiply consumption without warning.

Selected sessions:

• "The Wild West of AI, Token Economics and the New Job of FinOps" — Day 1 Keynote
• "AI for FinOps from Alerts to Agents" — Day 2 Keynote
• "Governing AI Costs and Proving ROI" — Breakout
• "The Cost of Cognition: Why Your AI Budget Will Break in the Agentic Era" — Breakout
• "AI FinOps != Cloud FinOps: Building Observability for AI Spend" — Breakout
• "Beyond the Tokens: Building the CTO's AI Control Plane" — Breakout
• "Engineering a Cost per Feature Capability with OpenTelemetry" — Breakout
• "Building Autonomous FinOps Agents for Cost Optimization" — Breakout
• "How Estée Lauder Shifted FinOps Left All the Way to the AI Code Generator" — Breakout
• "Turning AI Cost Data into Strategic Decision Insights" — Breakout
• FinOps for AI Chalk Talk — Workshop
• AI for FinOps Chalk Talk — Workshop
• "Correlating AI Expenses with Business Outcomes" — Lightning Talk
• "Implementing Full Stack AI Cost Attribution" — Lightning Talk

Theme 2: FinOps Scopes — Beyond Cloud

Sessions extend FinOps practice to cover SaaS, licensing, data platforms like Snowflake and Databricks, and on-premises and data center infrastructure.

Selected sessions:

• "FinOps Has a Data Cloud Problem" — Breakout
• "Regaining Control Over Databricks Costs: A FinOps & Engineering Journey" — Breakout
• "Personalized FinOps for Data Cloud Platforms" — Breakout
• "Eliminating Shadow Waste in Data Cloud Platforms" — Breakout
• "Cloud Was Just the Beginning: Extending FinOps to On-Prem at Scale" — Breakout
• "Managing Cloud and AI Spend In the Age of Converging Disciplines" — Breakout
• "FOCUS as the Backbone: Making Multi-Cloud FinOps Reporting Boring" — Breakout
• "How Gerdau Unified Multi-Cloud + SaaS with Automated Allocation and Unit Economics at Scale" — Breakout
• FinOps for Data Cloud Platforms Chalk Talk — Workshop
• FinOps for SaaS & Software Chalk Talk — Workshop
• FinOps for Data Center Chalk Talk — Workshop
• "Multi-Cloud FOCUS Data Ingestion" — Lightning Talk
• "Hybrid Cost Transparency on PlayStation" (Sony Interactive Entertainment) — Lightning Talk

Theme 3: Adopting FinOps and Scaling the Practice

How leading teams drive FinOps adoption across engineering, finance, and business units — at global scale, with small teams.

Selected sessions:

• "Running FinOps at Scale With a Small Team: Inside Our Operating Model, Automations, and Monthly Cadences" — Breakout
• "From Specialist Bottleneck to AI-Powered Scale: AI as a Force Multiplier for FinOps Democratization" — Breakout
• "Embedding FinOps into Everyday Decisions at Global Scale" — Breakout
• "Earning a Seat at the Executive Table: Positioning FinOps as a Strategic Business Enabler" — Breakout
• "Surviving Chargeback without Tagging" — Breakout
• "When Your DIY FinOps Tool Stops Scaling" — Breakout
• "Making FOCUS Work in Practice: Lessons from Elo's FinOps Journey Beyond Cloud" — Breakout
• Adopting FinOps Chalk Talk — Workshop
• Shift Left Chalk Talk — Workshop
• FinOps Assessments Chalk Talk — Workshop

Theme 4: Optimization for Value — Unit Economics and ROI

Moving the conversation from cost reduction to value creation — through unit economics, business outcome alignment, and technology investment decisions.

Selected sessions:

• "saveMoney(): The Developer's Guide to Unit Economics" — Breakout
• "How to Make Usage Optimization a Boardroom Topic" — Breakout
• "Optimizing for Value: FinOps at Cummins" — Breakout (with Hemraj Yadav, Cummins)
• "From On-Demand to Optimized: Your Guide to Smarter Cloud Commitment Strategies" — Breakout
• "Advanced AI Optimization with AWS and Capital One" — Breakout (with Raymond Dao and Lauren Brown, Capital One)
• "Managing Capacity at the Feature Level" — Breakout
• Unit Economics Chalk Talk — Workshop
• Optimization Beyond the Obvious Chalk Talk — Workshop
• "Making Unit Economics Actionable" — Lightning Talk

Theme 5: FinOps-Enabled Executive Decisions

Equipping CTO, CIO, and CFO stakeholders with the visibility and frameworks to make faster, better technology investment decisions.

Selected sessions:

• "Oracle and Paramount: Driving Executive Decisions" (with Janel Jensen, Paramount; Cody Sanders, Oracle) — Breakout
• "FinOps + ITFM: One Version of the Truth, Two Speeds of Value" — Breakout
• "The Frozen Metric: Avoiding the KPI Trap in Enterprise FinOps" — Breakout
• "Building FinOps for a World That Might Not Need You" — Breakout
• FinOps Exec: AI Value Executive Summit — Special pre-conference session (June 8)
• Shift Up: Executive Strategy Alignment Chalk Talk — Workshop

Pre-Conference: June 8 Workshops

Pre-conference training and chalk talks on June 8 offer practitioner-depth sessions. Topics include: FinOps for SaaS, AI for FinOps, FOCUS implementation, FinOps Framework updates, FinOps & ITFM Intersection, FinOps for Data Center, The FinOps Defense Playbook (Risk, Policy & Governance), and the FinOps Exec: AI Value Executive Summit for senior leaders.

Featured Keynote Speakers

FinOps X 2026 opens with keynotes from:

• J.R. Storment (FinOps Foundation) — co-founder and community voice of FinOps
• Mike Fuller (FinOps Foundation) — CTO of the FinOps Foundation
• Cyril Belikoff (Microsoft) — VP of Microsoft Azure FinOps
• Bradford Lyman (Amazon Web Services)
• Sarah McMullin (Google Cloud)
• Nicholas Armstrong (Oracle)
• Frederik Pohl (SAP)
• Courtney Totten (Shutterstock)
• Pooja Kumar (Prudential Financial)
• Sonali Niswander (MetLife)
• Mike Eisenstein (Accenture)
• William Lobig (IBM Cloudability)
• Becky Trevino (Flexera)
• Ishita Vyas (FinOps Foundation)

Who Attends FinOps X?

FinOps X draws practitioners, leaders, and vendors from across the cloud financial management ecosystem. The practitioner mix includes FinOps practitioners and analysts, cloud architects, VP/Director-level engineering leaders, CFOs and VP Finance, platform engineering and SRE leads, and FinOps program managers. Companies in attendance span Fortune 500 enterprises to high-growth SaaS companies. Past attendees have represented organizations including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, ExxonMobil, MetLife, Fidelity, Equifax, PayPal, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Atlassian, Canva, Target, Walmart, Fannie Mae, and many others.

FinOps X 2026: Dates, Registration, and Pricing

Dates: June 8–11, 2026 Venue: Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina Registration: x.finops.org/register

Pricing options:

• General Attendee: $1,999
• Practitioner / FinOps Foundation Member Organization: $999
• Group discounts available for groups of 3 or more (email x@finops.org)
• Pre-Conference (June 8): Separate ticket required for Monday workshops and chalk talks

Download the official FinOps X app (iOS and Android) to build your session schedule, receive alerts, and navigate the venue.

Finout at FinOps X 2026

The conversations happening at FinOps X this year — about AI cost allocation, data platform governance, unit economics, and driving FinOps adoption across the organization — are exactly what Finout is built for.

Finout is the enterprise FinOps platform for teams that have outgrown their current tooling. As cloud environments grow more complex, AI workloads multiply, and FinOps remit expands into new technology categories, the need for a single, accurate, and adaptable platform becomes critical.

Finout delivers 100% cost allocation — including shared costs and untagged resources — through instant Virtual Tags that can be updated without engineering pipelines. MegaBill unifies spend across AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI, Kubernetes, Snowflake, Databricks, and Datadog into one source of truth. Unit economics gives finance and engineering teams consistent, trustworthy numbers from the same platform — eliminating month-end reconciliation.

We will also be hosting a customer breakout (Lyft) session on Wednesday, June 10 at 2:45 PM. 

And if you're joining us in San Diego, don't miss FinOps After Dark — Finout's most anticipated FinOps event is back at FinOps X 2026. Register here.

Schedule a meeting with our team at FinOps X