Technical Talks

Emilie Schario

COO & VP of Eng | Kilo Code

Stop Looking for AI Spending Caps

Coding Agents & Autonomous Dev

Engineering leaders keep asking for AI spending caps—but that instinct is not only outdated, it’s actively slowing teams down. In this talk, I’ll argue that hard cost limits break developer flow, undermine trust in AI tools, and optimize for the wrong metric entirely. The real lever isn’t capping usage—it’s increasing throughput. I’ll walk through why the fastest engineering orgs treat AI spend like cloud infrastructure (monitor, don’t hard-throttle), how model freedom gives teams far more control than they realize, and why ROI comes from workflow design, not token austerity. The companies that win won’t be the ones that minimize AI usage—they’ll be the ones that maximize it. This session reframes AI cost management around developer speed, continuity, and impact—not the monthly bill.

COO & VP of Eng

Emilie Schario

Kilo Code

Emilie Schario is Co-Founder and VPE at Kilo Code, where she focuses on turning AI investment into real engineering output. She operates at the intersection of AI tooling, engineering org design, and the day-to-day realities of running high-performing teams, helping organizations translate innovation into measurable impact.

Emilie’s work emphasizes the unglamorous but critical side of AI adoption: building frameworks, workflows, and internal tooling that enable engineers to take ownership of outcomes, experiment effectively, and measure success without relying on traditional project management. She is passionate about autonomy, accountability, and creating systems where teams can move quickly while maintaining quality and trust.