WorkMay 14, 2026via The Information
Why Anthropic Costs Are Unpredictable
Why it matters
As AI model costs spiral, enterprise customers are discovering they lack basic cost visibility and governance tools—creating budget chaos and forcing companies to choose between blind spending or cutting off access entirely.
Key signals
- ServiceNow exceeded full-year Anthropic AI budget
- Anthropic doesn't provide granular telemetry data to customers
- Customers cannot see which users consume which tools or usage patterns
- Enterprise software firms (SAP, Microsoft, Workday) offer telemetry; Anthropic does not
- PagerDuty and ServiceNow cited as affected customers
- Inability to identify 'tokenmaxxing' or inefficient usage patterns
The hook
ServiceNow already blew through its full-year Anthropic budget. And it has no way to see why.
Anthropic customers are already feeling pinched by the company’s AI price hikes, Aaron and I reported Wednesday. Making matters harder, Anthropic customers like PagerDuty and ServiceNow—which says it already blew through its full-year budget for Anthropic AI tools—can’t predict what they’ll pay this…