Uber, Tesla, Meta and Microsoft Cap AI Use as Token Billing Drives Costs Higher
Updated
Updated · The American Prospect · Jul 8
Uber, Tesla, Meta and Microsoft Cap AI Use as Token Billing Drives Costs Higher
3 articles · Updated · The American Prospect · Jul 8
Summary
$500 million in one month for Anthropic's Claude at one unnamed company has sharpened a pullback, with Uber, Tesla, Meta and Microsoft now limiting employee AI token usage.
Token-based billing replaced flat subscriptions after OpenAI, Anthropic and peers kept losing money, with one estimate putting compute spending at 70% of total industry revenue ahead of planned IPOs.
Executives are openly questioning the model: Palantir CEO Alex Karp said "something has gone completely wrong," while Tesla exempts Elon Musk's in-house Grok from its cap.
The cost backlash adds to doubts about AI economics, threatening demand for chips and data centers as companies curb usage rather than expand it.