Source: Semianalysis
Companies that rushed to deploy generative AI without guardrails are now confronting actual token costs, forcing procurement teams to implement spending controls and audit usage patterns they previously ignored. Enterprises are moving from experimental adoption to managed consumption, which is shifting vendor negotiations. They're demanding better pricing models, usage transparency, and ROI justification rather than accepting per-token commodity pricing. That leverage shift favors customers over API providers, whose unit economics assumed unlimited scaling.