Governance 1st pays for itself in three ways: it lowers what you spend on AI models, it reduces the cost of AI going wrong, and it helps your people get more out of AI. Enter your own numbers below. Every row explains what Governance 1st does to earn that value and where the default assumption comes from, so you can adjust anything you disagree with.
Your organization
These numbers feed several rows below.
Realization factor: not every hour AI saves turns into more output; some of it goes to meetings, breaks or slack. At 50%, half of the hours saved are counted as dollar value. Use 100% to count all of them, or lower it to be more conservative. It only applies to time-savings rows.
Annual Governance 1st investment: $0
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Governance 1stThe platform
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Lower AI costs
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Governance 1st routes every request through one gateway that speaks to closed providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) and open-weight models (Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen and others through Together, DeepSeek and Groq) with the same guardrails, filters, monitoring and audit trail on both. That is what makes open-weight models safe to use at all: the governance does not change when the model does. Agents, chat and each platform feature can be pointed at a cheaper model, and the AI Directory records cost per 1,000 tokens for every model so the choice is visible.
Why the default
Summarizing, classifying, drafting, extracting and routine Q&A make up a large part of everyday AI use, and open-weight models handle them well. Hosted open-weight models are commonly priced at a fraction of frontier closed models per token, often well under a quarter of the price. 50% of work moved and a 75% saving on that work are conservative midpoints; check current provider price sheets for your own mix.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Every document uploaded, imported, or synced from Google Drive or SharePoint is extracted, chunked, embedded and stored in a vector index automatically, with a background job that catches up on bulk syncs. When a person or an agent asks a question, Governance 1st works out how much document text the chosen model can afford to carry and retrieves the relevant passages instead of pasting whole files into every prompt. Nobody has to set up a retrieval pipeline, and the index is scoped to your organization.
Why the default
When people attach policies, contracts and handbooks to AI requests, document text is often the largest part of what gets billed. Retrieval typically sends a small fraction of a long document. This row applies only to the spend left after the open-weight savings above, so the two rows do not count the same dollars twice.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Every model call, whether from chat, an agent or a generated app, passes a token gate before it runs and records what it spent afterward. Administrators set budgets by person, team or agent, so one looping agent or one careless pattern cannot quietly consume a quarter's budget before anyone notices. The kill switch stops all AI for the organization at once if something goes badly wrong.
Why the default
Agents that loop, retries that repeat and oversized prompts are a known source of surprise AI bills. 5% of spend is a modest estimate of what goes to waste without limits.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Governance 1st gives every employee governed access to many models from many vendors in one place, using your organization's own keys. Teams that bought separate ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini subscriptions to get a particular model no longer need them, and the AI Directory and Microsoft Copilot monitoring show which tools are actually in use.
Why the default
Individual and team AI plans commonly cost $20 to $30 per person per month. 40 retired subscriptions in an organization of 500 is a small share of people who typically buy their own.
Risk avoided
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Risk rows show expected annual loss avoided: the chance of the event in a year, times what it costs, times how much Governance 1st reduces it.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Content filters run on the server before a prompt leaves your organization, on chat, agents and generated apps alike, so they cannot be bypassed from the browser. A pattern library detects personal data, credentials, financial and health identifiers and more, and can block or redact them. Documents are scoped by organization and permission, every request is logged, and Microsoft Purview signals can be pulled in alongside. New rules can be simulated against real traffic before they are switched on, so tightening protection does not break the work.
Why the default
IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach report puts the global average breach at $4.44 million and found that breaches involving shadow AI added about $670,000 to the cost. Pasting confidential material into public AI tools is a well-documented problem; Samsung restricted generative AI in 2023 after engineers pasted source code into ChatGPT. A 10% annual chance and a 50% reduction are deliberately cautious.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Governance 1st follows the NIST AI RMF and turns it into daily practice: committees with approval and notification rules, use cases with risk assessments, policies from the Policy Generator, training with exams, and records kept under retention rules with legal hold. Ten evaluators check AI responses for bias, dangerous medical, legal and financial advice, hallucination and more. When a regulator, auditor or plaintiff asks what you did, the audit log shows who used which model, under which rules, and what was flagged.
Why the default
AI is now regulated and litigated. The EU AI Act allows fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global turnover, US states including Colorado and New York City regulate automated decisions in hiring and other areas, and the EEOC settled its first AI hiring-discrimination case, against iTutorGroup, for $365,000 in 2023. $1 million covers defense and settlement of a mid-sized claim; adjust it for your industry and exposure.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Customer-facing agents and apps carry the same guardrails and monitoring as internal use. The hallucination, misinformation, bias, bigotry and partisanship evaluators can run in blocking mode, so a bad answer is stopped instead of published. Agents and Symphony workflows need committee approval before they go public, and the kill switch takes everything offline in one step if an incident starts.
Why the default
When an AI tool says something wrong in public, the company owns it. In 2024 a Canadian tribunal held Air Canada responsible for refund terms its website chatbot made up. A 2% annual chance and a 1% revenue impact are conservative; the cost of lost trust is usually larger than the incident itself.
Getting more out of AI
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Time savings are multiplied by the realization factor above, because not every hour saved becomes an hour of useful work.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
People stop guessing what they are allowed to do with AI. A library of approved use-case prompts shows them how, the Generate button turns a rough request into a stronger prompt with its risks and guardrails, Prompt Coach shows each person what their own prompts keep tripping, and training modules with exams build the skill. Governance that people trust is what lets an organization move AI from a few enthusiasts to everyone.
Why the default
15 minutes a week is a small fraction of what studies of generative AI at work report for regular users. It is set low on purpose, because this row measures the improvement from governed enablement, not AI itself.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Because documents are indexed automatically as they arrive from uploads, Google Drive and SharePoint, employees and agents can ask questions and get answers grounded in your own policies, procedures and records, limited to the documents each person is permitted to see. Document tools add summaries, critiques, study guides and quizzes on top.
Why the default
McKinsey Global Institute found that knowledge workers spend about 1.8 hours a day, nearly 20% of the week, searching for and gathering information. The default assumes only 2 hours a week and recovers only a tenth of it.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
The Agent Builder creates agents step by step with the rules they must follow, the documents they may use and the model they run on, and deploys them as an API or a standalone page. Symphony connects agents, apps, APIs, databases and human review steps on one canvas, runs them on a schedule, and sends them for committee approval before they go live. Because each workflow can use the least expensive model that does the job, automation also stays cheap to run.
Why the default
Onboarding, intake triage, applicant screening support, report assembly and policy questions are typical first workflows, and each commonly absorbs dozens of staff hours a month. Eight workflows saving 30 hours a month each is a modest first year.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
Vibe lets a non-developer describe an internal tool in a chat and get a working app, stored and hosted inside the platform with the organization's data controls, and submitted for approval before it is shared. Small trackers, request forms and dashboards that would otherwise wait in an IT queue or go to a contractor get built in an afternoon.
Why the default
A small internal application built by a contractor or an internal team typically costs tens of thousands of dollars once requirements, build and testing are counted. Three apps a year at $25,000 each is conservative. This row is avoided spend, so the realization factor is not applied.
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How Governance 1st delivers it
The work of governance happens where the AI work happens. Committee meetings, agendas, decisions and action items are run in the platform, and committees are notified automatically when a use case, model or guardrail changes. The Policy Generator produces framework-aligned policies from vetted templates, the dashboard scores governance maturity across all seven steps, and audit evidence comes from the log instead of spreadsheets and email.
Why the default
Without a platform, committee administration, policy drafting, evidence gathering and inventory upkeep fall on compliance, legal and HR staff. 40 hours a month across those people is a light estimate for an organization of 500.
Included with Governance 1st
These products come with Governance 1st at no extra cost, and the AI Legislation Map is free for everyone. Each has its own subtotal, and all of them are added to the grand total.
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Shadow AI Browser ExtensionIncluded with Governance 1st
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Shadow AI covers the AI that Governance 1st never sees: tools, AI features and browser extensions people use on their own. Its risk row covers only that channel: unapproved tools, AI inside SaaS apps, AI extensions and file uploads, none of which pass through Governance 1st.
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How it delivers it
The extension sees, across your managed devices, which AI tools are used, which SaaS apps have AI built in, which AI browser extensions are installed and when files are uploaded to AI, and scores each tool for risk with a recommendation. It records that AI was used, never what was typed, and reports anonymously by default. Once you can see a risky tool, you can approve it, replace it or block it, which is what turns unknown exposure into a managed one.
Why the default
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach report is the basis for this row. Of the organizations IBM studied, 20% reported a breach involving shadow AI, and those breaches cost about $670,000 more than average. 97% of organizations that had an AI-related breach lacked proper AI access controls, which is exactly the gap visibility closes. The default uses IBM’s 20% as the annual chance and its $4.44 million global average breach cost; the U.S. average in the same report is $10.22 million, so U.S. organizations can reasonably raise it. A 25% reduction is conservative: visibility alone does not stop every leak, but you cannot control a tool you cannot see.
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How it delivers it
Without telemetry, the only way to build an AI inventory is to survey employees, interview department heads and read expense reports, and the answers are out of date the day they are collected. Shadow AI keeps a live inventory of AI tools, vendors and extensions that feeds risk reviews, audits and the AI Directory in Governance 1st.
Why the default
An organization-wide AI usage survey, its follow-up interviews and reconciliation commonly take compliance, IT and HR staff a few weeks a year. 120 hours is a conservative estimate. The realization factor is applied.
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Governance 1st Browser ExtensionIncluded with Governance 1st
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The browser extension puts guardrails on the public AI tools people already use, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, so protection does not depend on everyone moving into Governance 1st.
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How it delivers it
Before a prompt is sent, the extension checks it for sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, card numbers and credentials, and blocks it or offers to redact it. It can also inject the organization’s guardrails into the prompt. This covers data typed straight into public AI websites, a different channel from the requests that go through Governance 1st.
Why the default
Most employees use public AI tools in the browser, and pasting confidential material into them is the most common way AI leaks data. A 6% annual chance for this channel, a $4.44 million breach (IBM, 2025) and a 50% reduction are deliberately cautious.
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How it delivers it
The extension audits responses as well as prompts. It watches for ten bad AI behaviors, including hallucination, bias and dangerous advice, and flags answers that amount to financial, legal or medical advice needing a qualified professional. The person sees the warning before they act on the answer.
Why the default
Acting on a wrong answer about a contract term, a tax rule or an employee matter can easily cost thousands of dollars in rework, penalties or professional fees. Ten caught mistakes a year at $5,000 each is a modest estimate for an organization of 500.
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How it delivers it
Guardrails added to each prompt keep answers on task and within policy, so people spend less time correcting, rewriting and asking again. Activity can also flow into Governance 1st, so monitoring covers public AI use as well.
Why the default
Six minutes a week is a small share of the time people spend refining AI output. The realization factor is applied.
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Policy FastTrackIncluded with Governance 1st
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Policy FastTrack produces customized AI compliance policies from vetted templates for state laws, national and international laws, and standards such as ISO 42001 and the NIST AI RMF. It gives your legal or compliance team a strong draft to review and approve; it is not legal advice and does not replace counsel.
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How it delivers it
Policy FastTrack has templates for the AI laws passed in more than 30 states and New York City, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York and Texas: disclosure notices, opt-out procedures, bias testing, chatbot safety and impact assessments. Each template is built on the text of the specific statute, so your team starts from a draft that already reflects what the law asks for.
Why the default
An organization operating in several states often needs a separate notice or procedure for each state law that applies to it, and a compliance consultant commonly charges a few thousand dollars to research and draft each one. Six a year at $2,500 is modest for a multi-state employer.
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How it delivers it
Templates cover the EU AI Act (classification, provider and deployer obligations, AI literacy, transparency, prohibited practices, incident reporting and fundamental rights impact assessment), GDPR, the Digital Services Act and national laws in 26 countries, including Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, China, India, Singapore, Australia and Mexico.
Why the default
Cross-border policies cost more to draft because they involve longer regulations, more defined terms and, outside your home country, unfamiliar legal systems. $4,000 per policy is a conservative consultant rate; three a year fits an organization with EU customers or staff.
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How it delivers it
ISO/IEC 42001 alone has 19 templates in Policy FastTrack covering the AI management system clause set: acceptable use, asset register, impact assessment, risk appetite, supplier policy, ethics oversight and more. There are 16 NIST AI RMF templates in three tiers, plus SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS and FedRAMP sets, each aligned to the clauses an auditor checks.
Why the default
Standards documentation is the most expensive to commission. An ISO 42001 certification needs a full documented management system, and consultants typically price each policy, procedure and register separately because each must map to specific clauses and survive an external audit. $5,000 per document and six a year are conservative for an organization pursuing ISO 42001 or a SOC 2 report.
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How it delivers it
A written policy tells people what they may do with AI, with which tools and which data, so they stop asking, guessing or avoiding AI altogether. Clear rules mean fewer accidental violations, faster adoption and a documented standard to train against. A documented policy is also evidence: auditors, regulators and courts look for one first, and some AI laws, such as Colorado’s, recognize following a framework like the NIST AI RMF or ISO 42001 as part of a defense.
Why the default
Without a policy, employees spend time asking permission, waiting for answers or redoing work that turned out to be off-limits; 15 minutes a month each is a light estimate. Each misuse incident, such as confidential data in an unapproved tool or an AI-written document sent without review, costs time to investigate, contain and correct. Four a year at $7,500 is modest. The realization factor is applied to the time savings.
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How it delivers it
Templates are updated as frameworks and laws change, so keeping a policy current means regenerating it rather than rereading the regulation. Placeholders are filled from one form, and the AI summary explains what each policy requires and who it applies to.
Why the default
Researching a framework, drafting, and circulating a policy for review typically takes internal staff two or more working days even when counsel finalizes it. The realization factor is applied.
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AI Legislation MapFree
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The AI Legislation Map is free to use, so everything it saves is pure return. It tracks enacted and pending AI legislation across the U.S. federal government, all 50 states and DC, and countries around the world, and links laws to the matching Policy FastTrack templates.
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How it delivers it
Click any state or country to see every tracked AI law with its status, bill number, summary, latest action and a link to the primary source, or filter the whole set by status and category such as employment, healthcare or high-risk AI.
Why the default
AI laws are being proposed and passed faster than most legal and compliance teams can follow, especially across many states. Ten hours a month of tracking with 60% of it saved is conservative for a multi-state organization. The realization factor is applied.
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How it delivers it
For AI-specific laws, the map replaces a paid legislative tracking subscription or a law-firm alert service that would otherwise be needed to keep up.
Why the default
Commercial legislative tracking services commonly charge thousands of dollars a year. Set this to zero if you would not buy one.
How this calculator works
Lower AI costs are direct savings on what you already spend on AI models and subscriptions.
Risk avoided is expected value: the yearly chance of an event, times its cost, times the reduction Governance 1st provides. In a year with no incident it is insurance value; in a year with one it is far larger.
Getting more out of AI converts hours saved into dollars at your loaded hourly cost, then applies the realization factor.
ROI is net annual value divided by the annual investment. Payback is the investment divided by the monthly value.
Rows can be switched off with their checkbox. Figures are estimates based on the assumptions shown and are not a guarantee of results. For a version built on your own data, book a demo.
