Today, I’m announcing that the FinOps Foundation has officially updated our mission, as approved by our Governing Board.
We have moved from “advancing the people who manage the value of cloud” to:
“advancing the people who manage the value of technology.”
Let me start with the State of FinOps 2026 numbers. They tell the story better than I can:
- 98% of FinOps practitioners now manage AI spend. That’s up from 31% two years ago.
- 90% manage SaaS. Up from 65% last year.
- 64% manage licensing. Up from 49%.
- 57% manage private cloud. Up from 39%.
- 48% manage data center. Up from 36%.
- …and 28% reported they are managing labor costs natively in their FinOps practice.
This is not a cloud cost discipline anymore. This is a broad technology value discipline. Our community of FinOps practitioners told us so. The data confirmed it. And now the Foundation’s mission reflects it.
It also acknowledges something senior leadership may have missed: technology spend in its entirety has become a strategic consideration for every company. FinOps is already functioning as a strategic discipline at the largest enterprises. The mission change simply names that reality.
For practitioners, this evolution has opened a clear path for career advancement. Cloud-only FinOps practices often plateau at director level. But at the largest enterprises, a new archetype has already emerged: the FinOps Enabled Executive, a VP or SVP-level leader managing technology value across cloud, SaaS, data centers, platforms, and AI under a unified practice. These leaders are progressing toward CIO, “COO for the CTO,” or Chief Infrastructure Officer roles. The broader the scope, the higher the trajectory.
How We Got Here
In 2019, we formed the first incarnation of the FinOps Foundation. I remember the early conversations about whether there was even enough here to warrant a foundation. Could we get 50 companies involved? Maybe 100 practitioners?
By the summer of 2020, when we merged into the Linux Foundation we had 1,500 community participants.
Today, more than 96,000 people have participated in FinOps Foundation programs. Over 65,000 have been trained and certified. Our community represents over $2 trillion in technology spend. 93 of the Fortune 100 have practitioners engaged with the Foundation.
The mission change we’re announcing today is reflecting the activities that you in the community are already doing every day.
Last year at FinOps X, we began discussing the potential of updating the mission to reflect the reality we were seeing in the talks in San Diego. Across deep discussion in three separate Governing Board meetings (both in person and virtually) from June 2025 to February 2026, the board eventually voted to approve the change.
One Word Changed
We’re talking about a small change:
Our old mission: “Advancing the people who manage the value of cloud.”
Our new mission: “Advancing the people who manage the value of technology.”
That’s it. One word. Cloud became Technology.
But here’s what didn’t change:
People are still the core. We are not focused on the technology. We are focused on the people who drive its value. We are an organization focused on advancing people. Practitioners. The humans doing this work every day. That has always been our center of gravity and it remains so.
Value is still the goal. Not cost. Not savings. Value. We’ve always believed that FinOps is about maximizing the value organizations get from their technology investments, not just minimizing the bill. That belief and word is unchanged.
Cloud is still embedded. We didn’t abandon cloud. We expanded the aperture. Cloud is now one important category within the broader technology landscape that practitioners manage in a happily hybrid world. It’s still in there.
The mission change reflects what practitioners are already doing.
Four Trends That Drove This Change
When our Governing Board approved this mission change in early 2026, these trends were clear:
From Explaining the Past to Shaping the Future
Mature FinOps practices are moving beyond reporting on past spending to actively shaping future investments. This involves influencing technology decisions (architecture choices, vendor selection, commitment structures) before financial commitments are made.
FinOps is no longer reactive. It’s become the strategic input that shapes how technology investments get structured.
Practitioners now sit in architecture review meetings. They participate in vendor selection. They help structure multi-year provider commitments. They chair AI investment review councils. They’re not explaining last month’s bill anymore. They’re shaping next year’s technology strategy.
Shift Left: Operational Proactivity
Practitioners are prioritizing a “shift left” FinOps approach, embedding financial context earlier in the engineering lifecycle. This allows teams to make informed decisions pre-deployment, avoiding costs that never materialize rather than remediating after the bill arrives.
Our State of FinOps survey confirms this direction. Pre-deployment architecture guidance emerged as a top desired tooling capability. Practitioners want to catch problems before they become problems.
Shift Up: Strategic Executive Alignment
FinOps has elevated to an executive-level conversation.
78% of teams now report to the CTO or CIO. And here’s the kicker: those with VP/SVP/EVP/C-suite engagement show dramatically increased influence over technology selection. Cloud service selection (53% vs. 24%). Cloud provider selection (47% vs. 16%). Cloud vs. data center placement (28% vs. 12%).
FinOps leaders increasingly participate in strategic provider negotiations, commitment structures, and even M&A technology due diligence. They’re answering questions about ROI and value realization, not just savings.
When FinOps shifts up, with executive support it becomes an organizational priority for all stakeholder personas.
Expanded to Broader Technology Value
In our community, FinOps practitioners describe the broad technologies they are responsible for–like SaaS, licensing, private cloud, data center, AI, and even labor–all now normalized categories, managed with the same discipline that successfully managed public cloud infrastructure.
One VP described her role expansion this way: “First they asked us to fix cloud. Then fix the software mess. Then the data center. Now it’s fix the vendor partnership mess.” She went from cloud cost management to SaaS rationalization to strategic vendor relationship management to becoming a key advisor to the Head of Infrastructure in charge of all technology use.”
Through interviews with senior technology leaders at companies including Salesforce, JPMorgan Chase, Fidelity, Disney, Adobe, and others managing billions in technology spend, two consistent executive profiles have emerged.
One leader at a Fortune 100 regulated company described the role this way: “You need someone who is equally CTO and CFO at the same time. They must have a multi-disciplinary team, must sit across tech decisions and must be a part of technology decisions starting at the business case. FinOps must be across all infrastructure for them to balance commitments and tradeoffs.”
These executives operate at VP, SVP, or EVP level, typically reporting directly to the CIO or CTO. Their career trajectory increasingly leads to CxO roles. For practitioners still in cloud-only practices, the path is clear: expand your scope, and the ceiling lifts.
Technology is Becoming More Cloud-Like
Technology categories from data cloud platforms to software licenses are getting more cloud-like, with the addition of consumption-based elements for AI. Organizations demanded granular services from vendors who have delivered, with complex and challenging service platforms and an ever expanding list of detailed services. These complex services need the speed and consistency of a FinOps approach to manage.
FinOps practitioners are uniquely equipped for this expansion. As one of our board members put it, “A car designed to go 200 miles per hour can more easily slow down to 20 than a car designed to go 20 can speed up to 200.”
Think about the expertise that cloud demanded of FinOps. Real-time data. Constant variability. Resources spinning up and down by the minute. Millions—or even billions—of line items on a single bill. FinOps was built for that speed and complexity, and FinOps practitioners have delivered.
Data center refresh cycles? Annual licensing renewals? Monthly SaaS invoices? Those move slower. The data is less granular. The rate of change is lower. If you’ve built the capabilities to manage cloud at 200 miles per hour, you can absolutely handle the 20 mile per hour pace of traditional IT spend.
The technology landscape has gotten more challenging and consumption-based. Practitioners have stepped up to deliver, managing across a wider variety of technology categories, and are working with senior leaders, earlier in the product lifecycle, to make sure investments and organizational strategies achieve success. FinOps has become a technology value practice, not only a cloud cost practice. The mission update now reflects this.
What Comes Next
The mission change is just the beginning.
Over the coming months, you’ll see the Foundation update the FinOps Framework, our training, and our certifications to reflect the focus on broader technology value to support the community. We’re launching new working groups focused on AI value, ITFM integration, and executive alignment. FinOps X in June 2026 will feature content that spans the full technology value landscape.
But honestly, I don’t know exactly where this goes. And that’s okay.
When we started this Foundation, I didn’t know 96,000 people would show up. I didn’t know practitioners would expand from cloud to AI to SaaS to data center to labor costs. I didn’t know FinOps would shift from back-office reporting to executive strategy conversations.
The community surprised me. I expect it will keep surprising me.
The mission now says we “advance the people who manage the value of technology”. That’s broad on purpose. Because wherever this discipline goes next, we’ll follow the practitioners who take it there.
One word changed. The journey continues.
See you out there.
J.R.
Read the full State of FinOps 2026 report. Join us at FinOps X, June 8-11 in San Diego.
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