# How Nubank made usage optimization a boardroom topic | PointFive Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/blog/how-nubank-made-usage-optimization-a-boardroom-topic At FinOps X, Nubank's Thomas Hammer and PointFive co-founder and CEO Alon Arvatz showed what it takes to make executives care about usage optimization:... By: Dave Anderson Published: 2026-07-16 [All articles](https://www.pointfive.co/blog) Dave Anderson CMO, PointFive July 16, 2026 5 min read Doing usage optimization is one job. Making executives and the board care about it is another, and it's the one most teams skip. That was the premise when Nubank's Thomas Hammer, who leads product operations for FinOps at one of the world's largest digital financial services platforms, joined PointFive co-founder and CEO Alon Arvatz on stage at FinOps X. Correction, September 23, 2026: this post previously gave the January-versus-December example as a $60,000 difference; eleven months at $5,000 a month is $55,000. The numbers Nubank put on the screen: Every number above is measured against actual billing, not modeled. That distinction is the whole talk. The full 47-minute session, from the [FinOps Foundation's YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0) , is right here, followed by the three moments worth stealing, with links straight to each one. ## Estimates get discounted. Verified numbers don't. Tell a CFO you saved "more or less $500K" and the number shrinks in their head before you finish the sentence: maybe it's $200K, maybe $300K. Alon's rule: accurate, verified savings get roughly twice the credit of an estimate, because there's nothing to argue with. [Session slide: estimates get discounted, verified numbers don't, projected savings are calculated from models, disconnected from billing, and easy to dispute; verified impact is measured against the bill, closed-loop, attributable, impossible to argue with](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=1233s) [Watch this moment on YouTube (20:33)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=1233s) , why estimates get discounted and verified numbers don't. That accuracy is expensive to produce, and that's the point. PointFive's research team splits its time 50/50: half on the detection logic for each inefficiency, half on the formula that calculates what fixing it actually saved (commitments, discounts, changing rates included). Thomas called the shift away from defending models "one of the single biggest changes" in how Nubank's cost conversations go, whether the person across the table is the CFO, the CEO, or the CTO. ## The $10 ticket problem Nobody asks an engineer to fix a ticket that saves $10 a month. Nubank had thousands of them: DynamoDB tables whose storage class no longer matched their access patterns. Each one trivial. In aggregate, not trivial at all. So the central platform team stopped filing tickets and built an automation on PointFive's GraphQL API. It optimized 3,000 individual tables, and that one opportunity type, in one AWS service, saved 1% of Nubank's total cloud spend. Time to resolution dropped 72%, and 92% of business units were impacted without any of their engineers touching a thing. The follow-on lifecycle automation flipped the responsibility model to opt-out: owners are told before an idle table is archived, and silence means the platform team proceeds. [Session slide: DynamoDB storage class optimization, 3,000+ tables optimized, 1% of total cloud spend saved, 72% reduction in time to resolution, 92% of internal teams impacted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=938s) [Watch this moment on YouTube (15:38)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=938s) , aggregating 3,000 small fixes into 1% of total cloud spend. The same story is told in detail in the [Nubank DynamoDB case study](https://www.pointfive.co/case-studies/nubank-dynamodb-optimization) . ## January versus December is a $55,000 difference The metric Nubank's CTO actually tracks isn't savings; it's how long an opportunity sits before someone acts. The average unattached EBS volume at Nubank lived 210 days. The automation cut that to 16. Alon made the cost of waiting concrete: take a $5,000-a-month volume you eventually clean up. Do it in January and you bank the savings all year. Do it in December and you've paid for eleven months of nothing, a $55,000 difference on a single resource. Time to resolution is a bottom-line number, and it belongs in the same slide as the savings total. [Session slide: what leadership can actually track, verified impact of 8 to 12 percent of cloud spend saved, resolution speed of 210 days down to 16, and ownership clarity across 92 percent of internal teams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=1140s) [Watch this moment on YouTube (19:00)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=1140s) , the January-versus-December math on a single EBS volume. ## Three things to take back Thomas closed with the checklist he wished he'd had when Nubank started: - Separate financial engineering from usage optimization. Rate cards and commitments belong to finance; efficiency-driven usage belongs to engineering. Every cost conversation needs exactly one owner. - Depth of detection sets the ceiling. The obvious waste (idle and underutilized compute) is already handled in most organizations. The opportunities that earn leadership attention live deeper: configuration drift, application-driven waste, architectural inefficiency. - Verified savings, not estimates, turn efficiency into a boardroom conversation. When everyone trusts the numbers, everyone can prioritize with them. [Session slide: three things to take back, separate financial engineering from usage optimization, depth of detection sets the ceiling on leadership attention, verified savings rather than estimates turn FinOps into a boardroom conversation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=1762s) [Watch the closing takeaways on YouTube (29:22)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0&t=1762s) . [Watch the full session on the FinOps Foundation's YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvCbeaCbm0) , and while you're there, subscribe to their channel; the FinOps X session library is worth your time. For more on how Nubank runs efficiency as an engineering discipline across 45+ business units, read the [companion case study](https://www.pointfive.co/case-studies/nubank-engineering-discipline) . And if you want findings your executives won't discount, [see PointFive on your own infrastructure](https://www.pointfive.co/request-demo) . ## Related reading [All articles](https://www.pointfive.co/blog) - ### [Video: How PointFive Enabled Cloud Cost Ownership for Nubank Engineers (FinOps X Barcelona 2024)](https://www.pointfive.co/blog/how-pointfive-enabled-cloud-cost-ownership-and-action-for-nubank-engineers-video) December 16, 2024 2 min read - ### [Unlocking Kubernetes Cost and Usage Visibility: Our Unique Approach](https://www.pointfive.co/blog/unlocking-kubernetes-cost-and-usage-visibility-our-unique-approach) August 28, 2024 6 min read - ### [TIME100 Talks at Dreamforce: Rethinking Cloud Infrastructure for Engineers](https://www.pointfive.co/blog/time100-talks-at-dreamforce-rethinking-cloud-infrastructure-for-engineers) September 15, 2025 2 min read --- Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.