Sam Altman talked about budgeting concerns from enterprise customers. AI skeptics trolled him on X.
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Sam Altman said AI budgeting had recently become a "huge issue" for some companies — and it sent AI bubble watchers and doomers into a frenzy.During a Tuesday enterprise event, Altman referenced memes like, "My company spent my entire 2026 budget in Q1." "That went from, at the beginning of this year, an issue that never came up — people were totally happy with the amount they were spending — to all of a sudden, a huge issue," Altman said.The reader response was loud. Some said that it was a warning of dark times or a failure in AI business model. The word "bubble" came up often. Others said it was par for the course, a normal stage as people learn what to actually spend their tokens on after a period of experimentation.Commentators from Gary Marcus to Michael Burry got involved. Here are some of the most interesting reactions.Some say it's a dark warningEd Zitron, one of the internet's foremost AI bubble warners, wrote on X that OpenAI was "absolutely cooked.""This is loser language," Zitron wrote. "You can't be four years into the bubble saying 'yeah our customers have a huge issue with how expensive our business is.' You just raised $122 billion!"
