Uber blew its 2026 AI budget in April as token costs spiral
companies are facing 3x-5x ai cost overruns due to agentic models, forcing a shift from adoption to auditing.
enterprise ai spending is spiraling out of control, with companies reporting 300% budget overruns and renewals costing 4-5x more, leading to revoked licenses for tools like microsoft's claude code. this surge is driven by advanced agentic models like gpt-5.1 and claude opus 4.5, which have multiplied token consumption despite falling unit prices, leaving one company with a $500m bill due to missing usage limits. research indicates that while top token users are twice as productive, they cost 10x more, creating a crisis regarding roi and cost control. the linux foundation has launched the tokenomics foundation to address this, shifting industry focus from capability to efficiency.