Enterprise AI customers are pulling back from OpenAI and Anthropic as costs spiral out of control

Flo Crivello, CEO of AI startup Lindy, moved 100% of his company's traffic from Anthropic's Claude models to DeepSeek, a Chinese company that makes cheaper, open-weight alternatives. Crivello told CNBC the decision will save Lindy millions of dollars within months. "It's a matter of survival for the business," he said. "That's all it is."

AI spending surged across the industry after OpenAI's ChatGPT captured broad business interest in 2022, particularly in AI-assisted coding, where developers pushed large volumes of tokens into building new tools without close attention to cost, according to the outlet. Ride-sharing company Uber $UBER, which said it burned through its entire annual AI budget in four months, has since introduced spending tiers on some AI tools starting at $1,500 per month.

Jeff Henry, president of consulting at Highspring, told the outlet that some of his firm's clients are pulling back until they "can really start to prove an ROI," while others are waiting 12 to 18 months before committing to major spending decisions. "Everybody is experiencing the same spend crunch on AI," he said.

The shift comes as both companies prepare for public listings. Both OpenAI and Anthropic filed confidential IPO prospectuses with the Securities and Exchange Commission in early June. Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate reached $47 billion in May, while OpenAI's was pacing near $25 billion earlier this year, according to the outlet.

Gil Luria, an equity analyst at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC the timing of the filings may be deliberate. "There has to be some period of time in the future where there's some rationalizing of spend by companies, and that may be a blip ahead for Anthropic and OpenAI," Luria said. "That creates some sense of urgency to go public before we see that."

The budget pressure is opening space for competitors. Microsoft $MSFT, Amazon $AMZN, and Google $GOOGL have each been expanding lower-cost model offerings aimed at business customers.

OpenAI has been weighing significant price cuts to its services and launched new spending analytics and controls for enterprise administrators earlier this month, according to the outlet. Anthropic rolled out similar controls allowing organizations to set spending limits at the individual and organizational level, also according to the outlet. Neither company responded to requests for comment.