By Cloud budgets are growing, but nearly seven in 10 finance leaders believe up to 30% of that spend is wasted. Most organizations lack the cross-functional alignment to identify where the waste lives, let alone eliminate it. The gap between cloud consumption and business value is widening, and AI investment is now competing for the same capital.
In this interview on TFiR, Peter Maloney, CFO and COO at Azul, walks through the findings from Azul’s 2026 CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report and explains what it takes to build real cost discipline without putting brakes on innovation.
Guest: Peter Maloney, CFO and COO at Azul
Show: TFiR
Here is what every finance leader, engineering director, and FinOps practitioner needs to know.
Technical Deep Dive
Q: Why has cloud waste reached 30% and become a persistent norm across enterprises?
Peter Maloney, CFO and COO at Azul, explains that cloud waste is not caused by a single factor and cannot be solved by a single fix. It operates as a hidden tax embedded in the cost structure of scaling businesses, quietly reducing the capital available for other investments including AI. Solving it requires a coordinated group effort across finance, IT, product, and engineering rather than any one team acting in isolation.
“Cloud waste is a hidden tax and it’s taking up the ability to use that capital or that investment in other things.” — Peter Maloney, CFO and COO, Azul
Q: What is FinOps and why are so few companies doing it well?
FinOps is a cross-functional discipline that brings together finance, engineering, and product teams to identify cloud waste and take coordinated action to eliminate it. According to Maloney, only 18% of companies surveyed have established FinOps centers of excellence, meaning the practice is still in early maturity for most organizations adopting cloud at scale. The gap reflects a broader cultural and organizational failure to treat cloud spend with the same rigor applied to other cost structures.
“Only about 18% of companies that we surveyed have FinOps centers of excellence. It is evolving.” — Peter Maloney, CFO and COO, Azul
Q: Why are CFOs treating cloud spend as a board-level concern now?
Maloney notes that as AI investment demands grow, the hidden tax of cloud waste becomes more visible and more damaging to overall capital allocation decisions. CFOs who want to fund AI initiatives and drive profitable growth are finding that unoptimized cloud spend is directly competing for the same budget. This is pushing cloud economics from an IT operations concern to an executive and board-level conversation.
“AI is starting to take off and we all want to invest in AI to improve our businesses. The tax is more relevant now.” — Peter Maloney, CFO and COO, Azul
Q: How do CFOs align with engineering and product leaders to bring predictability to cloud economics?
Maloney argues that alignment starts with a shared cultural goal and a common definition of success, not just more data. Finance, IT, product, and engineering teams each have access to significant data, but without common metrics, consumption figures, and output targets, that data produces competing priorities rather than coordinated action. The CFO’s role is to establish the common language that connects activity metrics to commercial outcomes and then hold cross-functional teams accountable to shared definitions of what good looks like.
“Common language, common metrics, not just activity metrics, consumption, commercial metrics, but output metrics. What defines success. Working together to achieve what defines success.” — Peter Maloney, CFO and COO, Azul
Q: How do you balance cloud cost discipline with the need to keep innovating and not fall behind?
Maloney frames this as a capital allocation problem rather than a speed-versus-savings tradeoff. When cloud waste is treated as a hidden tax and eliminated through cross-functional FinOps practices, it frees capital that can be redirected toward AI and other innovation priorities. The goal is not to slow cloud investment but to make room within existing investment by removing waste that is consuming budget without producing business output.
“It allows the investment to be optimized and potentially make room for other investment.” — Peter Maloney, CFO and COO, Azul
Resources and Documentation
- Azul, Java runtime and cloud cost optimization platform for enterprise engineering teams
***
👇 Click to Read Full Raw Transcript
Swapnil Bhartiya: You folks recently released CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report, which paints a striking picture. Nearly. If I’m not wrong, seven in 10 finance leaders believe that up to 30% of their cloud spend is wasted. Yet cloud bills keep going up across the board. Before we get into solutions, I would love to understand the problem itself. Why has this level of waste or lack of optimization become a norm?
Peter Maloney: You know, it’s interesting, right? You look at what most CFOs are trying to do today, they’re trying to help their company scale profitably, right? And there’s a lot of things that go into profitability. It’s the gross margins, it’s your cost structure. And just like other areas within your cost structure, you know, cloud waste is sort of a hidden tax and it’s not one thing that causes it and it’s not one thing that solves it. In order to go and solve identifying the hidden tax and take action, it really comes down to a group effort with what we call finops, right? And finops is starting to take on in many, many companies that are adopting cloud and trying to become more mature with cloud. And so CFOs are now starting to see this because that hidden tax is taking up the ability to use that capital or that investment in other things. Just like know, AI is starting to take off. And we all want to be able to invest in AI to improve our businesses. And so the tax is more relevant and working with other organizations or other parts of your business is really important to identify and sort of solve the, the hidden tax.
Swapnil Bhartiya: CFOs are kind of seeing this as a board level concern, which may be good or bad depending on how you look at it. But that’s kind of also a significant shift from who actually owns this problem. How are CFOs and not only through this report, but your own interaction when you talk to other CFOs, how are they working together to bring actually more predictability? Because there is no predictability right now. That’s the problem with the waste, right? Bring some predictability, bring some discipline to cloud economics without putting brakes on innovation. Because you don’t want to be left behind, but you also don’t want to move so fast that everybody else is left behind.
Peter Maloney: That’s right. I think, look, it starts with a cultural change or a cultural common desire to have a common outcome. And a lot of it, there’s a lot of data, right, that’s available to CFOs and other people within it, product engineering, et cetera, but it’s using common metrics and having a common goal as to what you’re trying to accomplish within your cloud investment. As I mentioned before, only about 18% of companies that we surveyed have FinOps centers of excellence. And so it is evolving. But I think that the CFO working with IT leaders, product leaders and engineering leaders, and having common language, common metrics, not just activity metrics, consumption, commercial metrics, but output metrics, what defines success and working together to achieve what defines success. It allows the the investment to be optimized and potentially make room for other investment.
