💰 The AI bill shock is here

💰 The AI bill shock is here For years, AI companies made usage look cheap. Now the subsidy era may be ending. Workato saw its Anthropic bill jump 700% overnight after Anthropic switched from a flat monthly fee to pay-per-token pricing. Suddenly, every prompt had a price tag, and the true cost of AI became impossible to ignore. And it’s not just one company. Tech giants that spent the last two years pushing AI adoption are now putting the brakes on it: • Uber reportedly exhausted its 2026 AI budget by April and now limits employees to $1,500 per month. • Amazon told staff to stop using AI just for the sake of using it after employees began running agents to climb internal rankings. • Walmart, Cisco, Meta, and JPMorgan are also tightening controls as AI spending balloons. The bigger issue? This comes at the worst possible moment for AI’s biggest players. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly preparing for massive IPOs while still losing huge amounts of money. OpenAI’s losses reportedly grew from about $5 billion in 2024 to $38 billion in 2025, even as revenue surged. Meanwhile, customers are starting to question whether the economics make sense. A Bain survey found that 40% of companies achieved less than 10% cost savings from their AI investments. Some firms are reportedly discovering AI bills that rival entire employee salaries. @aipost 🏴