Shadow AI and Decentralized Budgets

Marketing signs up for a content-generation tool on a team credit card. HR connects a résumé-screening add-on to the applicant system. A sales operations analyst builds an agent that reads the CRM export and drafts follow-ups, running on a personal API key. Each decision is small, fast, and sensible from the point of view of the person making it. Taken together, they form a second, unmanaged AI estate: shadow AI.…