I wrote the other day about Uber blowing its 2026 AI budget in four months, and how that wasn't particularly surprising given they would have set that budget in 2025, …
Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in 4 months | TechCrunch
Uber's cutback has occurred after the company had reportedly encouraged staff to use AI as much as possible.
How Uber uses AI for development: inside look
How Uber built Minion, Shepherd, uReview, and other internal agentic AI tools. Also, new challenges in rolling out AI tools, like more platform investment and growing concern about token costs
AI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system.
Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.
Uber president says AI spending is getting ‘harder to justify’
There’s no clear connection between AI usage and productivity.
AI's Affordability Crisis
A year ago in The Back Of The AI Envelope I pointed out that the AI platforms were running the drug-dealer's algorithm, "the first one's fr...
Companies Are Throttling Employees’ AI Use Because It’s Too Expensive
Sources and leaks from Amazon, Adobe, Atlassian, Citi, and more show what is really happening with AI right now: companies are trying to rein in AI use as costs spiral out of control.
What AI coding costs you | Tom Wojcik
What's the effect of the prolonged AI usage among coders and is it tracked correctly, if it all?
Augment Code Pricing - Plans for Teams and Enterprise
Simple, transparent pricing for AI-powered development. Plans for individuals, teams, and enterprise.
The AI Buildout and the Material Trap
Why Strategic Necessity, Physical Bottlenecks, and Unsettled Economics Are Forcing Capital into a Constrained System
AI can cost more than human workers now
When AI labs raise prices, big spending on AI could shift from a flex to a liability.
Code Was Never the Asset - The Phoenix Architecture
Why AI makes the hidden economics of software unavoidable
AI Benefits - But at What Cost?
In 2026 we can all agree that AI and agentic development are certainly exciting topics which many see yielding great productivity gains. But as the investor-subsidized pricing of these services gives way to realistic and profitable business models, where will the real costs land?
Cline on Twitter / X
Your daily driver for AI coding shouldn't be a black box -- the stakes are too high. You should have confidence that when you spend $20 on frontier models, you're getting $20 in frontier model intelligence.With subscription tools, you never know what's happening:- Is that… pic.twitter.com/lKUVFLMEip— Cline (@cline) July 8, 2025
Agents get budgets and boundaries - Sensemaker
Microsoft shipped more concrete agent controls while Uber put coding agents on a token budget. The agent story is becoming IT management, not demos.
AI Code Is Producing a Quality Crisis Nobody Wants to Talk About
The productivity numbers look great. AI coding tools are everywhere.
Dynamic pricing
Both AI and non-AI
AI 'surveillance pricing' under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers
Canada Has a Precedent to Regulate Surveillance Pricing
Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds via @ConsumerReports
Kroger Stores Overcharging Shoppers on Sale Items, CR Price Check Finds via @ConsumerReports
Different Prices for the Same Ride: How Uber and Lyft Use AI to Get More Money Out of You via @ConsumerReports