AI costs

Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget by April. Microsoft is canceling Claude Code licenses by June 30. One company ran up a $500 million Claude bill in a single month. Per-token prices have fallen 98% since 2022, but enterprise AI bills have risen 320%. The agentic multiplier — where autonomous AI tools consume 18.6x more tokens per developer — is creating the biggest cost crisis in enterprise technology since cloud computing. This article maps the five-layer Enterprise AI Cost Governance Stack and provides a FinOps Maturity Assessment for organizations navigating the token economy.