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Sticker shock has execs rethinking this whole AI thing

July 13, 2026 · 27 min

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Like a drug dealer who's hooked you and raised their prices, business leaders are simply shocked to learn the AI their organizations are becoming dependent on is suddenly a lot more expensive.

Kettle host Brandon Vigliarolo is joined by Reg reporter Lindsay Clark and contributor Joab Jackson this week to discuss their recent stories about the rising cost of enterprise AI - and one way a popular open-source project is trying to fight tokenmaxxing with tokenminning - but the question remains whether such measure will be enough to prevent cost-benefit analyses from popping that bubble.

Will the AI industry adapt to the fact it's still unprofitable, blowback from usage-based billing, and a desire to not pay AI models as much as the human devs they're supplementing or replacing? That's what's on the hob for this week's episode.

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