AI is becoming more expensive and companies are scrutinizing their bills more closely. This makes sense, but above all they should develop more AI expertise in controlling the systems.
Microsoft reportedly recently cut internal Claude Code licenses, partly for strategic reasons but also because costs were climbing. Uber's COO said AI spending is getting "harder to justify" as long as the actual return on investment is hard to measure.
Axios now reports a particularly extreme case: an unnamed company allegedly spent half a billion dollars in a single month because nobody set usage limits on Claude licenses. Enterprise AI models often lure companies in with flat-rate pricing, but those plans typically cap the number of requests per model.
Another CTO says employees use AI systems to check the weather. It works, sure, but it costs way more than a regular search. Sophia Velastegui, a former AI lead at Microsoft, told Axios that companies tend to throw AI at tasks nobody wants to do rather than at work that actually drives revenue.
AI is getting more expensive, and companies need to get smarter about using it
