Do this: Open your bank or card statement, filter to the last three months, and list every subscription you recognise but cannot remember deciding to keep. Most owners find three to five. Then paste this into any free chatbot, one tool at a time.
PASTE THIS
Act as a finance director who hates waste. Here is a subscription with its annual amount: [tool name, cost per month or per year, what the team uses it for]. Write me: (1) the exact cancellation wording if it goes, (2) what specifically breaks in the business if it is cancelled, (3) a keep or cut verdict with the reason in one line. If nothing breaks, call it a cut and do not soften it.
You'll get: A one-line verdict per tool with the reason, the cancellation wording for the cuts, and a running total of what the cuts save you over a year.
The six questions to email your AI vendor this week
Nobody reviews their AI vendors until a renewal lands. By then you are negotiating against a deadline you did not set. Send this instead, ten minutes, and the replies become your file.
The rule that makes it work: anything answered verbally gets an email summary that day. A vendor who will not put it in writing has answered you.
Most firms never count the money that leaks: a licence nobody opens, an invoice nobody read, a tool nobody remembers buying. That is not an IT problem, it is a budget line. The fix is two written numbers, requested before you renew rather than after. Most suppliers send them the same day.
From October 9, Google's free plan drops to Flash Lite. Standard Flash moves behind the $4.99/month AI Plus plan, and Gemini Pro moves to the $19.99 tier, per The Verge. The same week Mistral shipped a 1 trillion parameter open-weight model at a fraction of the running cost, CNBC reports.
So what: if your team drafts documents or answers customers in free Gemini, test Flash Lite on real work before October 9, then decide this week whether to pay $4.99 or move that work to the cheaper open-weight model.
The AI pay filings and your renewal
Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows chief executive Dario Amodei was paid $18 million in 2025 and his sister Daniela $16.4 million, per Reuters via Techmeme. So what: before your next renewal, ask your vendor for one page naming the model you run, the data behind it and the liability you carry, and put a review date in the contract.
Your customer list sits in a supplier's cloud
ASOS users opened their app to a push notification claiming the retailer's data warehouse had been compromised, and the shares fell more than 10% while the company investigated, per BBC Technology. So what: this week, write down which supplier holds each customer list you depend on, and ask them in writing what happens to your data and your customers if their account is breached.
The watermark arrives with a deadline
OpenAI started adding watermarks to text written in ChatGPT and Codex to comply with the EU's AI Act, per The Register, also reported by TechCrunch. So what: if AI-written copy goes out under your name this quarter, get a written answer this week from whoever writes it, because the rules carry a date and the audit lands on you.
This week's question: we bought the AI tools, the team barely opens them, and we are still paying every month. Where does an owner start? Start with the invoice, not the training session. List every AI tool you pay for, put the monthly figure beside it, and ask one question per line: what would break if we cancelled this on Friday? Where the honest answer is nothing, cancel it, and put that money into the one tool your team already opens without being asked. Most firms fund adoption by cutting shelfware, not by adding budget. Do it before the renewal dates cluster, because a renewal is the wrong moment to discover a tool has no owner.
Which tool are you paying for and not using?
A. An AI writing tool
B. A meeting recorder
C. A premium chat plan
D. Nothing, we cancelled those already
Reply with one letter — results next issue.
Which company authorised $150 billion of share buybacks this week, a record sum, as AI demand kept its order book full?
Answer tomorrow — and no, we are not printing it here.
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER
Which chip designer's stock popped 9% this week after Sam Altman called it a close partner?
Cerebras Systems. CNBC reported the premarket jump after OpenAI's chief executive described the firm as a close partner.
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