Show Me the ROI is the weekly show for leaders who decide what AI is worth, and answer for it. Vladimir Cvijanovic breaks down what AI adoption actually costs, what it returns, and where the numbers get quietly rewritten, joined by Lola on adoption economics and Zoltan checking every claim against decades of ROI hype. New episodes every Thursday. If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://go.c42.pro/cal, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email podcast@c42.services. Hosted by zvuk.stream. Voices in this show are digitally rendered.
Show Me the ROI: Three Cuts, Three Stories About AI
Three large employers cut management in the same week, and each gave AI a different job in the explanation. The FT reports that HSBC plans to cut up to 70% of its UK wealth advisers, although HSBC's own research of about 10,000 investors found only 12% named AI as the biggest factor in their last investment decision. HSBC has not confirmed the figure. UBS, sixth in the Evident AI Index, kept its advisers and gave them a tool that saves about 1,200 hours a week.
HubSpot is cutting nearly 660 roles and flattening management, and its CEO wrote in an SEC filing that the cut "is not driven by AI-related efficiencies." BMW cuts 20% of its divisions and management roles by mid-2027, and its finance chief calls agentic AI "a game-changer." Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan also take apart Schneider Electric's $22.6 billion purchase of PTC, and why investors took about 9% off its shares the same day.
Plus the one sentence every restructuring paper needs before it reaches the board: what AI actually does in the plan, the metric that proves it in twelve months, and the name next to that metric.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://go.c42.pro/cal (https://go.c42.pro/cal), reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/)), or email podcast@c42.services (mailto:podcast@c42.services).
Hosted by zvuk.stream. Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.
1 Oct 2026
Show Me the ROI: The Contract and the Clock
Reuters reviewed Anthropic's leaked IPO prospectus. The numbers it reported: $4.6 billion in 2025 revenue, an $8.06 billion operating loss, $518 billion in cloud and compute commitments, and two customers at about 12% of revenue each. Anthropic has not commented. Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan work through what that means for any CIO buying frontier models: price protection, notice before a model retires, data portability, and evaluations you own.
Then Oracle Fusion Claw, where agents run cheaper per action but unused pooled units expire and Oracle can change its action and model tables on 30 days' notice. Gartner gives CFOs a 9 to 10 month payback clock for quick-win finance AI, while U.S. Bank finds 51% of finance leaders already over their AI tool budget. And PwC's survey of 49,364 workers shows the 56% who do the core delivery work losing ground on AI training. Plus three questions to answer about your largest AI contract before your next renewal.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://go.c42.pro/cal (https://go.c42.pro/cal), reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/)), or email podcast@c42.services (mailto:podcast@c42.services).
Hosted by zvuk.stream. Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.
24 Sept 2026
Show Me the ROI #005: The Cost of an Accepted Outcome
OpenAI halved its token prices this week. Anthropic cut its own by 20%. Gartner still expects worldwide AI spend to reach $2.7 trillion in 2026, up 49.5%. Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan work through why the bill keeps growing while the unit price falls, and why Forrester, Greyhound Research, and Roosh co-founder Serhiy Tokarev all point to the same measure: the cost of an accepted outcome. They also dig into Hg's deal for 70% of Greek ERP group EnterSoftone at a valuation of about €1 billion, with AI written into the value-creation plan, and into who carries the liability when AI agents inside SAP, Salesforce, or Workday make decisions no one in the company approved. Plus the seven cost lines to ask for before your next AI budget review.
Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email podcast@c42.services.
10 Sept 2026
Show Me the ROI #004: The Correction-Time Number Nobody's Tracking
65% of employees at companies already using AI say they'd roll it back. 42% say they spend more time correcting AI output than the tool is supposed to save them. This week Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan dig into what that gap actually costs, why CEE seed-stage investors are getting priced out of their own market by mega-funds writing checks ten times the usual size, and what Mistral AI's $3.5B round at a $24B valuation says about who's actually positioned to win the AI capital race in Europe. Plus the one number worth asking for before you sign off on the next AI budget.
Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email podcast@c42.services.
3 Sept 2026
Show Me the ROI #003: The Trillion-Dollar Question Nobody's CFO Can Answer Yet
Ninety four percent of CEOs plan to keep increasing AI spend this year. Only sixty percent are actually confident it'll pay off. This week Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan dig into why that gap exists: the seventy percent of AI cost that never shows up on an AI line item, the board math that's still built for a world where spend and outcome move in a straight line, and the CEE companies that bought the tool before they found the problem. Plus why Ford and Commonwealth Bank of Australia had to publicly reverse AI-driven layoffs, and why the CFO is quietly becoming the person who has to answer for all of it.
Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email podcast@c42.services.
27 Aug 2026
Show Me the ROI #002: The Trillion-Dollar Attribution Gap
Gartner puts 2026 global AI spend at 2.59 trillion dollars, up 47% from last year, and in the same breath forecasts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects get canceled by the end of 2027. This week, Vlad, Lola, and Zoltan trace the connective tissue between those two numbers: why most companies can't attribute AI cost to a specific workflow once pilots hit production, what that looks like once it scales into agent sprawl (West Monroe's 550+ internally built agents, Blackline's "hundreds," Microsoft's 500,000+), and the four-step measurement discipline that separates an AI initiative you can defend in a board meeting from one that just becomes part of next year's unexplained bill.
Voices in this episode are digitally rendered.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email podcast@c42.services.
20 Aug 2026
Show Me the ROI #001: The AI Reckoning That Went Quiet, and What CEE Already Knows
AI budgets are under real scrutiny, but the reckoning nobody predicted for midyear never arrived, it just got quieter. This episode breaks down why AI costs spike the moment a pilot connects to real workflows, what Bulgaria's Graphwise proved when Oakley Capital bought a majority stake, why Exadel's CDAO says token usage is the wrong success metric, and the market data on why smart buyers skip the frontier model. Voices in this episode are digitally rendered. New episodes every Thursday.
If you're trying to close the gap between what your AI initiative promised and what it's actually delivering, book a strategy session at https://calendar.app.google/YH7SA6Rrs3CbZRaw5, reach out on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimircvijanovic/), or email podcast@c42.services.
24 Jul 2026
Show Me the ROI — Trailer
Every AI initiative gets approved on a promise. Few can prove, months later, that it paid off, in numbers a board will actually sign off on. Show Me the ROI is the weekly show for C-suite leaders and PE operating partners driving AI adoption in CEE mid-market firms, breaking down what AI adoption actually costs, what it returns, and where the numbers get quietly rewritten. Voices in this episode are digitally rendered. New episodes every Thursday.
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