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Glossary entry

Cost to Serve

The full cost required to deliver a capability, product, service, or workflow to its end user or customer.

Why it matters

Cost to serve matters in AI because model usage is only one layer of the economics; integration, support, governance, and platform overhead often determine whether the service is truly viable.

For AI-enabled services, cost to serve is often the metric that reveals whether an apparently useful experience can actually scale with acceptable margins or budget discipline.