For the past two years, the tech industry has been driven by a bold promise: AI would replace many software engineering tasks and significantly cut company expenses. This optimism fueled stock market gains, triggered large-scale layoffs, and pushed companies to spend billions on AI infrastructure.
However, when these tools were deployed at scale, many firms were surprised by the soaring costs.
Microsoft, for example, invested heavily in Anthropic and provided its engineers access to Claude Code. Instead of lowering expenses, usage-based pricing led to rapidly rising bills, forcing the company to cancel licenses and move engineers to its own AI tools. Microsoft, Uber, and NVIDIA face the AI cost reality Uber experienced a similar challenge after rolling out Claude Code to 5,000 engineers. Adoption surged, with most developers relying on AI-generated code, but monthly usage costs quickly ballooned. Some engineers generated bills worth over ₹1 lakh, and Uber reportedly exhausted its 2026 AI budget within just four months.
NVIDIA also admitted that AI computing expenses had surpassed employee salaries in some cases. While basic AI models have become cheaper, advanced coding-focused AI systems continue to grow more expensive, with companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic increasing prices or changing billing structures, adding further pressure on corporate budgets. Bezos said, “This is not a crisis. ” Dismissing fears of an ‘AI bubble’, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that this is not a crisis, but ‘the biggest opportunity once in a century’. Meanwhile, SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son is launching a new AI fund ‘Project Izanagi’, worth ₹9.5 trillion. He argues that Artificial General Intelligence will become 10 times smarter than the human brain in a few years. Also read: Are your important emails going to Gmail spam folder?:Learn why Google sends those messages to junk
Big tech’s mega investment in AI…Anthropic’s dominance Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon are spending a record ₹69 trillion on AI infrastructure this year. According to Gartner, global AI spending will reach ₹240 trillion. Microsoft’s AI business is at a run rate (estimated profit) of ₹3.53 trillion, while Google’s cloud backlog has exceeded ₹43.93 trillion. Anthropic completed two funding rounds worth ₹2.86 trillion this year, bringing its valuation to ₹86 trillion. Meanwhile, Reliance Group will invest ₹10 trillion in India’s AI infrastructure over 7 years. Also read: Taiwan surpassed Indian stock market:AI and chip sector growth pushed market capitalization above ₹415 lakh crore
One call and AI law collapses US President Trump was about to sign an executive order, under which the government would get the right to security check powerful AI models for 90 days before their launch. To this end, tech giants (Altman, Pichai, Nadella) had already arrived in Washington.
But at the last minute, David Sacks, Trump’s former advisor and partner in 449 AI companies, called the President and argued that the rules would slow down AI development and China would gain an advantage. Musk-Zuckerberg also exerted the same pressure. As a result, Trump canceled the order. The surprising thing is that the law was voluntary, yet tech giants overturned months of national security policy in just 12 hours.
