What happened
Walmart capped employee use of an in-house AI agent, and Uber limited monthly spending on AI coding tools to US$1,500 per employee after exceeding its annual Claude Code budget. This shift reflects companies dialling back earlier widespread AI adoption pushes due to mounting computing costs. Google CEO Sundar Pichai reported a sevenfold increase in monthly token usage to 3.2 quadrillion tokens, while Amazon shut down an internal leaderboard tracking AI token use to prevent "tokenmaxxing".
Why it matters
Rising token costs compel procurement teams and platform engineers to re-evaluate AI budgets and usage policies. Companies are shifting from broad encouragement to gatekeeping, as Uber's US$1,500 monthly cap on AI coding tools demonstrates after its annual budget was exceeded. This follows recent reports of soaring AI costs forcing enterprise rethink. The high expense of agentic AI, consuming one-thousand times more tokens than basic tasks, further complicates cost management for CTOs and founders.
