Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget by the start of the second quarter. One of the most technologically sophisticated companies on the planet ran out of AI money before spring was over.
The mix-and-match era
Rather than lock themselves into expensive contracts with a single AI provider, companies are blending models from multiple vendors, cherry-picking cheaper or more specialized options depending on the task at hand.
The Wall Street Journal reported on May 28 that this strategy of mixing and matching has become a defining trend among both startups and established tech players. The motivation is straightforward: soaring compute and inference costs have forced enterprises to ration their AI resources.
OpenAI eyes price cuts as Anthropic circles
