Is an AI Price War Brewing?

After months of runaway corporate usage, enterprise buyers are starting to treat AI as a budget problem as much as a productivity tool.

The shift from simple chatbots to multi-step agents has sent token consumption surging, forcing companies to cap usage, route work to cheaper models and renegotiate software contracts. That new cost discipline is setting up one of the biggest tests yet for the AI boom, with cheaper open-source models, custom chips and corporate budget cuts  threatening to reshape the market. A Deep Research analysis shows how the squeeze could play out next.