Total cost of ownership
Also known as: TCO
What is total cost of ownership?
Total cost of ownership is the full lifetime cost of an AI system: implementation, model and infrastructure spend, integration upkeep, monitoring, retraining, and the internal time spent supervising it.
Ongoing cost is frequently underestimated for systems that touch live customer data — model spend, monitoring, retraining and supervision continue long after launch. Budget for it explicitly or the system quietly degrades.
Last reviewed by the gAIcko editorial team.