The Way We Use and Pay for AI Is Changing
TechRadar, Tuesday, September 8th, 2026
As AI vendors move to metered, token-based pricing, enterprise buyers face surprise bills and contracts that offer little protection.
Businesses have bought AI like flat-fee SaaS, but vendors are shifting to metered pricing: Anthropic split agentic usage into a credit pool, GitHub Copilot moved to token-based credits, and a Claude tokenizer change raised some API bills by up to 27%.
Costs are biting, with Uber exhausting its 2026 AI budget by April and Salesforce expecting a roughly $300 million Anthropic bill.
The author argues this is a buyer-side problem, since supplier agreements built on SaaS templates lack audit rights, price-change notice and exit provisions. AI should be treated more like electricity, with metering visibility and FinOps discipline over scattered, often unsanctioned spend.