Companies are second-guessing their aggressive spending on AI, as the tech weighs on margins.
AI has been pitched partly as an avenue for businesses to save money because of increased productivity — but corporations are now facing ballooning IT costs.
Uber blew through its entire 2026 AI budget in four months because of Claude Code usage, and its COO said on a recent podcast that there isn’t yet a proven link between high AI adoption and useful customer-facing products. Axios reported that one company spent half a billion dollars on AI after failing to enact usage caps for employees.
Still, signs of a pullback are scant: A major US law firm set aside $500 million to create a proprietary AI platform.
