Rising AI Costs Are Becoming a Problem For Even Investors

In recent months, a lot of discussion has centered around the rising costs of AI, with even large, sophisticated public companies like Uber blowing through their 2026 AI budgets in a matter of months.

Even venture capitalists are feeling the pain. One partner at a large fund told me that they previously gave five of their staffers enterprise Claude accounts to help them with their work. 

In recent weeks, those usage-based accounts have cost the firm upwards of $1,000 per day per account as the staffers’ usage of more advanced and expensive models have grown, the partner said. Part of the issue was that the staffers, like many other casual users of AI, were defaulting to the most advanced models for most tasks, even simple ones like responding to emails, they said. 

The partner has since pushed the staffers to switch to cheaper and open-source models for more basic tasks, but if that spending pace had continued, those power users could have easily cost the firm over $100,000 per month, they said.