Why most AI initiatives get unfunded after year one.

This essay is part of Funding AI from Inside Your Existing Budget, a Mactores POV series written by the engineers who ship these programs. It is published as a position paper, not a sales document — the argument stands on its own, and the evidence comes from work we have delivered.

The pattern: year-one budget approved on optimism, year-two budget cut because the AI program competes with the same legacy renewal it was supposed to displace. How to break the pattern with the budget you already have.

We write these pieces because the decisions that determine whether AI reaches production are not the ones the market spends its attention on. The model menu, the framework debate, and the cloud-provider comparison are downstream of the executive choices about authority, accountability, and operational discipline. This essay takes one of those choices and works it through to a position you can defend to a board, a regulator, and a CFO.

The full essay is published with the named programs and audit artefacts that back the argument. To read it in that form, or to discuss how it applies to your environment, start a conversation with the team.