An Executive Dinner & Roundtable

The AI Paradox

This is an invitation-only executive dinner for leaders to discuss strategies and challenges of AI in business. We’d like you at the table.

Request Your Seat Seats are limited
When
June 2, 20266:00 — 9:00 PM ET
Where
Manhatta28 Liberty St · NYC
Who
VP & C-LevelFinance, Eng, FinOps, Cloud
Format
Intimate roundtableDinner included
The Conversation

A roundtable, not a rollout.

You’re the ones living the AI cost paradox every day. This dinner is built around your expertise.

AI spend is accelerating with no clear line to value, and nobody has solved it yet. That’s why this is a roundtable. Over a three-course dinner at Manhatta, an intimate group of senior leaders will compare notes on what’s working, what isn’t, and what to try next.

No slides. No pitches. Chatham House Rule. The value of the evening is the people at the table.

$644B
Global AI spending in 2025, up 76% year over year
21%
Of organizations can estimate the ROI of their generative AI initiatives
Key Discussion Themes

Three questions on the table.

01

The curiosity tax

Developer AI spend is the fastest-growing cost nobody is managing. A simple lookup vs. a deep reasoning chain can vary 100x on the same model. Cloud costs scaled with traffic. AI scales with curiosity. What does that mean for how you plan and report on results?

02

Beyond tokens and AWUs

Activity metrics measure usage, not value. The question that actually matters: what does it cost to serve Customer X on Feature Y using Model Z, and is the margin sustainable?

03

The subsidy cliff

Current token prices are subsidized. Providers are burning capital to establish position, the same pattern cloud went through a decade ago. When pricing corrects, who’s ready?

What to Expect

An evening built for the room.

Real Conversation

A dinner, not a conference.

Roundtable format. Chatham House Rule. The goal is to leave with ideas you didn’t walk in with.

Small Group, Big Titles

An intimate group of senior leaders.

Everyone at the table is dealing with the same problem: connecting AI spend to business value.

A Killer Venue

Manhatta, 60th floor.

Views of the skyline, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. The food and wine match the setting.

No Sales Pitches

This isn’t a vendor dinner.

Nobody is going to ask you to look at a demo. Come ready to share what you’re seeing and hear what others have figured out.

Your Host

Who’s facilitating

Scott Castle
Scott Castle
Chief Product Officer, CloudZero

Scott leads product strategy at CloudZero and spends most of his time with engineering and finance leaders working through the cost visibility problem that AI is creating. He’ll facilitate the evening’s conversation.

Erik Peterson
Erik Peterson
CTO & Founder, CloudZero

Erik founded CloudZero on the conviction that cloud and AI economics are an engineering problem, not just a finance one. He’ll bring a builder’s perspective to the conversation, sharing what he’s seeing across the engineering and FinOps leaders he works with every day.

The Venue

Manhatta. Sixty floors up.

A Danny Meyer restaurant on the 60th floor of 28 Liberty Street. The food is modern American, the views are floor-to-ceiling, and on a clear evening you can see the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and most of the skyline.

Not a bad spot to talk about the future of your AI bill.

60th Floor Views
Panoramic skyline,
Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge
Hospitality
Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality
World-class service
Cuisine
Modern American seasonal tasting menu
Curated wine pairings
Seats are limited

Request your seat.

AI adoption costs are going parabolic. The companies that can see what they’re spending will invest with confidence. Everyone else is flying blind.

Request Your Seat
June 2, 2026 · Manhatta · NYC