How to fund platform bets when features look expensive but compound value across business units.
Reuse factor
4.2x
Downstream features per core
Payback
14 mo
Platform subset
Cost per query
-31%
After routing+cache
Adoption
11
Product lines on gateway
Central AI platforms compete for capital with faster local wins. Finance sees cost; product sees optionality. Without a shared economic model, platforms starve or overbuild.
Unit economics for reusable components (models, gateways, data contracts), attribution of downstream wins, and stage-gates tied to adoption—not science-fair accuracy leaderboards.
Clearer funding narratives for agentic infrastructure and catalog intelligence, with explicit kill/scale criteria tied to measured adoption and risk reduction.
Finance
Product
Engineering
Risk