🇿🇦 English, 27 October 2026, AI costs
Companies Rein in AI Spending as Running Costs Mount
Nearly nine in 10 organisations have limited or redesigned AI use cases due to rising token consumption costs.
The State of Enterprise AI 2026 report found that 89% of organisations have curbed AI use cases due to increasing costs. Only 19% of IT leaders continuously monitor their token and inference spending. The survey polled 1,500 IT leaders at director level or above in nine markets, including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The cost of running AI tools is driven by token consumption, with 45% of respondents moving workloads to another cloud or private environment to reduce costs. 24% have paused or cancelled AI use cases altogether.
The problems are not only financial, with 98% of organisations experiencing failures, hallucinations, or unexpected behaviour in their AI deployments.