Companies are reducing artificial intelligence spending after operational costs doubled or tripled. Some firms exhausted their annual AI budgets within a few months.
Employees engaged in a practice called tokenmaxxing, maximizing AI tool usage without clear productivity gains. Uber spent its entire 2026 AI budget by April of this year.
Microsoft is now rationing employee access to specific third-party AI tools. Corporate leaders are shifting from broad experimentation to demanding measurable returns on investment. Firms are implementing stricter tracking and seeking cheaper alternatives to manage high operational costs.