If Microsoft and Uber can't afford AI coding, what chance do the rest of us have?

Two stories landed in the same news cycle.

Microsoft cancelled most internal Claude Code licenses. Windows, Surface, Teams, Outlook, all migrating to GitHub Copilot CLI by June 30. Reporting is consistent on the why: usage exploded, the bills got indefensible, and the company that owns Azure and is one of Anthropic's biggest partners decided it was cheaper to migrate thousands of engineers than to keep paying the meter.

Uber's CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said the company is "back to the drawing board" on AI coding. They burned through their planned 2026 AI budget within months. R&D was $3.4B last year and is still climbing. Engineers were ranked on internal leaderboards for AI tool usage. Claude Code became dominant. Costs went vertical.

Read that twice. Two of the most capitalized, AI-bullish companies on the planet just hit the wall on AI coding cost, and we're still in the first inning.

If they can't make the math work, what happens to the rest of us.