specification: FinOps Framework
specificationVersion: '1.0'
schema: https://www.finops.org/framework/
provider: Poolside
providerId: poolside-ai
created: '2026-07-02'
modified: '2026-07-02'
reconciled: false
tags:
- AI
- Foundation Models
- Enterprise
- On-Prem
- FinOps
- Cost Management
- FOCUS
description: >-
  FinOps view of Poolside spend. Because Poolside has no public price list,
  the dominant cost driver is a negotiated enterprise contract covering either
  a Cloud VPC deployment (AWS/Azure/Google) or an on-prem/air-gapped
  deployment (Poolside-pre-provisioned hardware or the customer's own NVIDIA
  GPU cluster via Helm), plus the underlying infrastructure spend for whichever
  path is chosen. There is no per-token metered invoice from Poolside itself
  to reconcile against FOCUS the way there is for a shared multi-tenant model
  API. The one metered, FOCUS-friendly cost surface tied to a Poolside model is
  third-party: calling the open-weight Laguna XS 2.1 model through OpenRouter,
  which bills per token under OpenRouter's own invoice, not Poolside's.
notes: >-
  Revisit this file if Poolside ships a public, metered API tier. Until then,
  cost governance is a hardware/contract-sizing exercise done directly with
  Poolside's sales team, and infrastructure cost tracking (GPU-hours, storage,
  network) for the customer-controlled deployment.
sources:
- https://poolside.ai/enterprise
- https://docs.poolside.ai/deployment/on-prem/admin
- https://openrouter.ai/poolside
- https://focus.finops.org/focus-specification/v1-3/
alignedWith:
  framework: FinOps Foundation Framework
  frameworkUrl: https://www.finops.org/framework/
  dataSpec: FOCUS
  dataSpecVersion: '1.3'
  dataSpecUrl: https://focus.finops.org/focus-specification/v1-3/
publisherName: Poolside
serviceCategory: AI and Machine Learning
billingModel:
  pricingCategory: Contract-Based
  billingFrequency: Custom
  billingCurrency: USD
  chargeCategories:
  - Purchase
  - Usage
meters:
- name: enterprise_contract
  description: Negotiated annual/multi-year enterprise agreement for a Poolside deployment (Cloud VPC or on-prem/air-gapped). No published unit price.
  unit: contract
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - account
  - deployment
- name: deployment_infrastructure
  description: Underlying GPU compute, storage, and network cost of running the customer-controlled Poolside deployment (cloud instances or owned hardware).
  unit: hours
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - deployment
  - provider
- name: openrouter_laguna_tokens
  description: Tokens billed by OpenRouter (third party) when calling Poolside's open-weight Laguna XS 2.1 model through OpenRouter's API rather than a Poolside deployment.
  unit: tokens
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - account
  - model
principles:
- name: Visibility
  description: Track the enterprise contract terms and the separate infrastructure bill (cloud VPC spend or owned GPU hardware amortization) for the Poolside deployment.
- name: Allocation
  description: Attribute deployment infrastructure cost to the team(s) or environment(s) the Poolside deployment serves, since Poolside itself does not meter per-team usage centrally.
- name: Optimization
  description: Right-size GPU capacity against the "hundreds of developers per node" reference point Poolside publishes, and evaluate OpenRouter's metered Laguna XS 2.1 access for lightweight/evaluation workloads before committing to a full deployment.
- name: Accountability
  description: Assign a named contract owner for the Poolside enterprise agreement and a named infrastructure owner for the deployment, since no self-serve billing dashboard exists.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com