OpenAI, Anthropic new AI spending reality as users shift to efficiency

Flo Crivello’s expenses were out of whack, and there was only one way to get them under control. 

Earlier this month, the 34-year-old CEO of AI startup Lindy switched his company off of Anthropic’s Claude models, moving 100% of its traffic to DeepSeek, a Chinese company that makes cheaper, open-weight alternatives. 

“We did it, and you could see that cost curve go down, like, crash to the ground,” Crivello said in an interview from his company’s San Francisco headquarters. He said the decision will save Lindy millions of dollars within months, though he still expects the roughly 25-person company to spend more on AI than payroll.

“It’s a matter of survival for the business,” Crivello said. “That’s all it is.”

Crivello, who previously spent almost five years at Uber, is among a growing crop of founders and executives across the U.S. trying to rein in artificial intelligence spending. Bills for AI have ballooned – sometimes into the billions of dollars – since OpenAI first captivated Wall Street with its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, kickstarting a rush by businesses to deploy the technology across areas like customer support, marketing and finance.

In particular, costs ramped up in the realm of AI-assisted coding, as developers pumped tokens into the creation of new tools and services that previously would have required teams of coders. That led to the era of so-called tokenmaxxing and AI leaderboards, where employers have incentivized developers to use as much AI as possible without worrying about the results.

The crackdown is underway. Uber said this month it had implemented a series of spending tiers on some AI tools, starting at a base level of $1,500 per month, though employees could request access to higher levels. In April, Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga revealed to The Information that the ride-sharing company blew through its entire annual AI budget in just four months.

OpenAI and Anthropic have been the principal beneficiaries of the spend-at-all-cost mentality, which has fueled their exponential growth rates and pushed both of the AI model leaders to valuations approaching $1 trillion.

Now, as they gear up for potentially historic IPOs — both filed confidentially in early June — the mood around AI is shifting, and business leaders like Crivello are no longer willing to throw money at Anthropic or OpenAI without a clear picture of a return on their investment.

“Current growth rates for Anthropic and OpenAI are the fastest they will ever be, which is mostly a matter of basic math,” Gil Luria, an equity analyst covering tech companies at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC. “That is a good reason to go public now, as is the concern that some of their largest enterprise customers may start limiting…