Multiple large enterprises, including Samsara, Docusign, Yum Brands, Cigna, and Compass, report that 2026 AI budgets have exceeded expectations without corresponding business value, prompting usage caps, per-employee token budgets, and deliberate shifts toward cheaper or smaller models. Gartner estimates companies can spend thousands of dollars per head on AI tools producing negligible productivity gains, and separately projects AI coding costs will exceed average developer salaries by 2028 due to rising token consumption and consumption-based pricing shifts. For financial institutions, the pattern indicates that enterprise AI spending is entering a scrutiny and rationalization phase, which structurally tests whether renewal and expansion behavior, rather than initial deployment, will sustain vendor revenue growth.
411 other tracked developments touching the same claims.