Published on 6/15/2026
The spending bill on artificial intelligence has increased for most companies that replaced their human employees with technology, and perhaps what happened with Uber, which spent the year’s budget allocated for artificial intelligence technologies in only 4 months, is the best example of what happened, according to what was stated in a report by the American technical website “CryptoBriving”.
The report stated that Uber launched the “Claude Code” program, affiliated with Anthropic, to about 5,000 engineers in December 2025, and the demand for it was huge, as the use of intelligent programming features increased from 32% in February to 84% by March 2026, and by that time 95% of Uber’s engineers were using artificial intelligence tools monthly, and about 70% of the total application code. And the company was relying on those tools.
Uber is not alone in this trend, as Microsoft followed suit, according to a separate report published by the American Forbes magazine, as the company began stopping its employees’ subscriptions to Cloud Code and urged them to use CoPilot GetHub instead.
The CEO of the famous Duolingo company, Louis von Ahn, also agreed with this trend, pointing out that artificial intelligence will not be able to replace its employees or perform its various tasks.
The trends of major technology companies that have a huge budget, such as Uber or Microsoft, reflect a painful reality regarding artificial intelligence technologies and programming tools using artificial intelligence, which is that these tools require very huge monthly spending.
The reason for the increased spending on artificial intelligence technologies is not due to the wrong actions of Uber or Microsoft employees, but is directly related to the new economic model pursued by artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI.
The artificial intelligence bill has arrived
A report by the American technical website TechCrunch reveals the beginning of a new era for artificial intelligence technologies and reliance on them in various companies, and refers to it as “Tokenpocalypse,” which means the catastrophe of tokens on which artificial intelligence technologies rely to work.
This matter is directly related to the transformation of pricing mechanisms in various artificial intelligence models, and their transition from relying on a fixed monthly subscription value that the user pays to access all the benefits, to a new model that determines the user’s bill based on his consumption and reliance on artificial intelligence techniques.
All artificial intelligence companies are now relying on this new approach, including Microsoft, which decided to move to it in the “Copilot GitHub” starting at the beginning of this June, according to a separate report from the American technical website “Tech Journal”.
The report reviewed the complaints of some programmers about the new model on social media platforms, as one of them’s consumption bill increased from $29 to $750 per month, and another’s bill increased from $50 to $3,000 per month.
This increase reflects a change in the relationship between artificial intelligence companies and the consumer. While previously companies were trying hard to convince users to switch to their technologies and make them pay a symbolic monthly value to use these technologies, they are now charging them based on their consumption.
The reason for the change in the positions of artificial intelligence companies is due to their willingness to go public and offer their shares on the stock exchange, which means that they need to convince investors that they are companies that achieve great profits despite large spending on various technologies, according to the “TechCrunch” report.
What do companies pay?
Uber President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew McDonald explained that the increased reliance on artificial intelligence was not directly proportional to the increased offering of features in the application, or even affected the features that users need directly.
This raises a pivotal question about the extent of the real benefit from artificial intelligence technologies if a company the size of Uber spent the entire artificial intelligence budget within 4 months and was unable to directly link the benefit to its customers and the large volume of its spending.
This represents the biggest obstacle for artificial intelligence companies that are striving to raise their profits so that they become as attractive to investors as possible, especially as these companies approach being listed on the stock exchange.
