COGS for AI
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Cost of goods sold is what it costs to deliver your product. For an AI product, inference is COGS: it scales with usage, unlike engineering salaries.
Classifying it correctly matters because it lands directly in gross margin, which is the number investors and boards ask about. Filed as R&D, it flatters the margin and hides a scaling problem.
Which is why "what did we spend on inference last month" needs a fast, reliable answer rather than a quarterly reconstruction.