How Cornell Recovered $100,000 in Unidentified Payments With AI
Case study published by the **Cornell AI Innovation Hub** (June 15, 2026): how a two-semester collaboration between the AI Hub, graduate students, and Cornell's Treasury team turned a time-consuming manual investigation into an AI tool that **recovered $100,000** in unidentified payments on a first batch. A successful **AI4Business** use case (financial process) that illustrates the **Leader-Lab-Crowd** framework of **Ethan Mollick** almost point by point: the **AI Hub** plays the role of the **Lab** (a central, ambidextrous team of technologists plus students); **Treasury** (Cheryl Barnes, Marie Graves…) is the **Crowd** carrying business knowledge and the real pain point; and the **$100,000** constitutes the **visible reward** (vivid win) that anchors adoption — exactly the incentive lever Mollick considers decisive. Key method: **"context first, then plan, then build"** via **Claude Code Plan Mode**, a chain of **fuzzy matching → Gemini Enterprise Web Search → Claude synthesis**, all within the governed **Cornell AI Gateway**. *"The $100,000 is a start."*
**Pete Stergion** — Desktop Engineer au Cornell AI Innovation Hub · co-tech lead du projet (avec Phil Williammee). Article institutionnel signé de l'AI Hub.