Most companies have little or no clue about their AI usage cost

In the past year AI has gone from being just a new trend to something companies use every day. Tools like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex are now part of regular work in many businesses. However many companies are starting to face a new problem which is the high cost of using AI. Some major companies including Uber and Walmart are now even limiting AI use because expenses are increasing. A recent report also suggests that many businesses do not fully understand how AI providers charge them. 

According to a KPMG survey, many companies still do not fully understand their AI costs. Only 26 per cent of businesses have a clear view of what they are spending on AI. On the other hand 50 per cent of companies have some visibility or clue on how they are being charged.   While 22 per cent say they only see the charges after receiving the bill. In short, only one in four companies fully understands its AI spending. KPMG’s global head of AI named Steve Chase said that “It’s a new resource that needs to be managed that didn’t exist quite that way, and we’re seeing exponential growth.”

 Why are usage of AI costs high?

This issue comes at a time when AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI mostly charge users based on tokens which are the units used to measure AI usage. The more people use AI tools, the more tokens they consume. Companies usually buy AI licences that include a fixed token limit for employees. If that limit is crossed, they have to pay extra charges. Steve Chase said KPMG has worked with companies that used up their yearly token and cloud budgets in just a few months. In one case a client's token usage increased six times faster than expected.

Like, Uber reportedly used up its entire yearly AI budget in just a few months because of rising costs. To control spending, the company has set a strict AI usage limit of $1,500 which is around Rs 1.42 lakh per employee. In another case, a company is said to have spent nearly $500 million on Claude in a single month this shows how quickly AI expenses can grow. This rising cost has become an issue, something that was acknowledged by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently. Altman who is the CEO of Open AI said that,  “It's kind of a meme now that my company spent my entire 2026 budget in Q1,” he added, “All of a sudden AI costs are a huge issue.” Earlier Amazon encouraged employees to use AI as much as possible a trend known as “tokenmaxxing.” But the company later reduced this push after reports suggested that some workers were using AI for even simple tasks just to increase their token usage numbers.

At the same time the discussion around AI spending is growing. Tech companies and AI firms are continuing to invest heavily in AI infrastructure even as businesses face pressure to prove that these investments are worth the cost. Google recently announced plans to raise $80 billion to support its AI projects marking its first major equity fundraising since 2006. Meanwhile, Anthropic has filed for an IPO and could reach a valuation of over $1 trillion while OpenAI is also expected to go public in the future.

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