FinOptica Introduces AI-Powered Virtual Tagging to Unify Cost Allocation

we're excited to announce AI-Powered Virtual Tagging—a breakthrough capability that solves one of the most persistent challenges in cloud FinOps: getting complete, accurate cost allocation without relying on perfect tagging hygiene or waiting on engineering teams to fix metadata.

With Virtual Tagging, FinOptica customers can now achieve 100% cost allocation coverage across AWS, Azure, and GCP—including resources that cloud providers don't allow you to tag natively. And with our new AI engine, you can do it in minutes instead of months.

The Cost Allocation Problem Is Getting Worse

Cost allocation is the second-highest priority for FinOps teams in 2025, according to the State of FinOps report. And yet, 46% of organizations cite tagging accuracy as their top allocation challenge. The gap between priority and progress is widening.

The reasons are structural, not just operational:

Many resources simply can't be tagged. AWS NAT Gateway data transfer, CloudWatch metrics, GCP egress traffic, Azure bandwidth charges—these costs often represent a significant portion of your bill, but cloud providers don't support tagging them. They end up in "shared infrastructure" buckets where no one takes ownership.

Legacy resources create dark spots. Resources deployed before tagging policies were established—sometimes years ago—remain untagged and unallocated. Retrofitting tags requires engineering time that's always prioritized below feature work.

Multi-cloud multiplies inconsistency. AWS tags, Azure tags, and GCP labels all work differently. Teams interpret tagging standards differently across clouds. Rolling up costs across business units becomes a reconciliation nightmare.

Engineering bottlenecks slow everything down. Even when resources can be tagged, applying or updating tags requires engineering involvement. FinOps teams identify gaps; engineering teams deprioritize fixes. Months pass. The cloud bill grows. Accountability remains unclear.

The result? Untagged resources cost organizations up to 30% of their cloud spending due to difficulties tracking expenses and optimizing resource allocation. That's not a tagging problem—that's a business problem.

Introducing AI-Powered Virtual Tagging

Virtual Tagging decouples cost allocation from cloud provider tagging limitations. Instead of modifying resources in your cloud environment, FinOptica applies allocation metadata at the data layer—giving you complete control over how costs are categorized, attributed, and reported.

Our new AI engine supercharges this capability by automatically analyzing your cloud resources and suggesting intelligent tag mappings based on:

• Resource naming patterns and conventions

• Account and project structures

• Network relationships and dependencies

• Historical usage patterns and cost correlations

• Existing tags on related resources

• Your organizational hierarchy and CMDB data

The AI doesn't just suggest tags—it explains why it's recommending each allocation, giving you confidence to accept suggestions or adjust them based on your organizational knowledge.

How It Works

Step 1: Connect Your Cloud Accounts

FinOptica ingests billing data from AWS, Azure, and GCP through secure, read-only connections. We also pull resource metadata, network topology, and existing tags to build a complete picture of your environment.

Step 2: AI Analyzes Your Environment

Our AI engine scans your resources and identifies allocation opportunities. It detects patterns like "all resources in account X belong to Team Y" or "resources with 'prod' in the name should be tagged Environment:Production." It surfaces untagged resources, inconsistent tags, and untaggable costs that need virtual tag assignments.

Step 3: Review and Accept Suggestions

FinOptica presents AI-generated tag recommendations with confidence scores and explanations. Accept suggestions individually, in bulk, or create rules that automatically apply similar mappings going forward. You maintain full control—the AI accelerates your work, it doesn't replace your judgment.

Step 4: Virtual Tags Apply Instantly

Unlike native cloud tags, virtual tags apply immediately across historical data. Tag a resource today and see allocations updated retroactively—no waiting for the next billing cycle, no gaps in reporting. Virtual tags work alongside native tags, filling gaps without overwriting your existing tagging investments.

Step 5: Unified Allocation Across Clouds

Virtual tags normalize cost allocation across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Define your allocation schema once—business unit, cost center, application, environment—and FinOptica maps cloud-specific data into a consistent taxonomy. Multi-cloud cost allocation becomes as simple as single-cloud.

Key Capabilities

Why This Matters

For FinOps Practitioners

Stop waiting on engineering. Virtual Tagging puts allocation control in FinOps hands, where it belongs. Identify gaps, apply fixes, and see results in the same day—not the same quarter. Spend your time on optimization and governance, not chasing tagging tickets.

For Engineering Leaders

Free your teams from tagging busywork. FinOptica handles cost allocation without requiring engineers to modify production resources or retrofit legacy infrastructure. When native tags matter (for automation or access control), you can still enforce them—but cost allocation no longer depends on perfect tagging hygiene.

For Finance and the CFO

Finally, complete cost attribution. No more "shared infrastructure" buckets hiding millions in unallocated spend. Every dollar gets assigned to a business unit, cost center, or application—enabling accurate showback, chargeback, and unit economics. Make cloud cost a manageable line item, not a mysterious blob.

"We had 40% of our cloud spend sitting in 'unallocated' buckets—legacy resources, shared services, data transfer costs. Within two weeks of enabling AI-Powered Virtual Tagging, we achieved 97% allocation coverage. Our finance team finally has the visibility they've been asking for."

— VP of Platform Engineering, Series C SaaS Company

Availability

AI-Powered Virtual Tagging is available today for all FinOptica customers on Professional and Enterprise plans. Existing customers will see the new capabilities in their dashboard immediately. The AI suggestion engine is included at no additional cost—our goal is to get every customer to 100% allocation coverage as quickly as possible.

New to FinOptica? Start a free trial and see how AI-Powered Virtual Tagging can transform your cost allocation in minutes.

What's Coming Next

Virtual Tagging is just the beginning. In the coming months, we'll extend AI capabilities across the FinOptica platform:

• AI-powered anomaly detection that explains why costs spiked, not just that they did

• Intelligent commitment recommendations that optimize RI/SP coverage based on usage patterns and business forecasts

• Automated governance policies that prevent cost problems before they hit your bill

• Natural language cost queries —ask questions about your cloud spend in plain English

We're building the AI-native FinOps platform that organizations need as cloud complexity and AI infrastructure costs accelerate. Virtual Tagging is our first major step—and we're just getting started.

Ready to achieve 100% cost allocation? Start your free trial of FinOptica and see AI-Powered Virtual Tagging in action. Or, if you're an existing customer, log in to explore the new capabilities in your dashboard today. Start Free Trial →

Questions? Contact us. We'd love to show you what AI-Powered Virtual Tagging can do for your organization.