AI Feature Cost Per User: The Complete Modeling Guide for US Enterprise 2026

$2.4M. That is what a US healthtech company was on track to spend in Year 2 on cloud AI inference for a feature that was approved with a $90,000 development budget and no inference cost model. The feature was popular. Users queried it 12 times per session on average. At $0.02 per query and 400,000 monthly active users, the math was not in the budget because no one built the model before launch. The board mandate to "add AI" is real and common. The cost model that should accompany it is not. This