OpenAI and Anthropic Face New Reality as Enterprise Customers Shift from 'Tokenmaxxing' to Efficiency

What happened

CNBC published analysis arguing the 'tokenmaxxing' era — burning unlimited tokens as a competitive flex — is over. Large enterprise customers are imposing hard spending caps and migrating workloads to cheaper models.

Context and impact

Both frontier labs (OpenAI, Anthropic) confidentially filed for IPOs in June, and their valuations rest on continued hyper-growth in revenue. If growth curves bend through efficiency, analysts warn 'the current growth rate will be the fastest these companies ever see.' Microsoft (investor in both) signaled GitHub Copilot now routes to the cheapest-fit model.

Details

• Uber introduced a $1,500/month AI tool tier after blowing its annual AI budget in 4 months
• Startup Lindy moved 100% of Claude traffic to DeepSeek to save millions
• Microsoft (>$13B in OpenAI, up to $5B in Anthropic) emphasized cost routing in Copilot
• Both labs filed confidential IPOs in early June
• Analysts flag risk to growth projections priced into investor decks