“It’s going to\u00a0be an absolute nightmare,\u201d says an executive at a big American tech company. He is talking about an emerging problem for businesses that use artificial intelligence.\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>agents\u2014bots that can read, interpret and act\u2014use masses of processing power and have started to run up huge bills. As they proliferate, the problem will grow. Big companies, the executive points out, typically use hundreds of software programs. If each of those offer agents (as they probably will),\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>costs could easily spiral out of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Budget management is a new worry for\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>adopters. Not long ago employees were encouraged to binge on the technology,\u00a0<\/small>as bosses and investors saw spending as a sign of innovation. Burning through vast numbers of tokens\u2014the chunks of text that models process, which are often used as a unit of pricing\u2014became a badge of honour; techies dubbed it \u201ctokenmaxxing\u201d. Companies showed off staff\u2019s\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>use on internal leaderboards. Meta\u2019s display awarded top users titles like \u201cToken Legend\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such incentives partly explain the boom in AI <\/small>spending. Another contributing factor is a change in the way enterprises use the technology. Token-heavy applications, such as reasoning models and agents, are growing more popular. In some cases agents build their own agents, sending costs higher still. Ramp, a corporate-credit-card provider, analyses its clients\u2019 transaction data to shed light on how they use AI<\/small>. It reckons their overall spending has risen 13-fold in the past year. In April Uber said that it had already spent its annual AI<\/small> budget in four months. Other firms are experiencing similar problems. One reportedly spent $500m on AI <\/small>tokens in a month. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI<\/small>, has described mounting customer costs as \u201ca huge issue\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, the problem is concentrated. The top spenders tend to be tech firms….<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> Burning through vast numbers of tokens\u2014the chunks of text that models process, which are often used as a unit of pricing\u2014was once a badge of honour. Now budget management is a worry for AI adopters https:\/\/t.co\/TZsf1H2BHC<\/a><\/p>— The Economist (@TheEconomist) June 16, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote>