The founder bragged about it on LinkedIn.
Called it proof they were "ahead in the AI race."
That's where we are in 2026.
Microsoft cancelled most of its Claude Code licenses. Cost.
Uber burned its entire 2026 AI budget by April. Cost.
Google sunset Mariner — "cost-per-completed-task made it absurd."
60% of companies say surprise AI bill spikes cause more financial strain than a consistently high baseline.
(Splunk State of Observability — October 22, 2026)
And here's what Microsoft quietly published in August:
"Models are stateless, so the full context is sent with every request.
A long conversation re-sends its whole history with every follow-up, so a question in the tenth turn costs several times what it cost in the first."
That's Microsoft.
Explaining their own billing mechanism.
Most founders read this and think it's just how AI works.
It isn't.
It's how unmanaged AI works.
Every agent step. Every call.
Full context. Full price.
System prompts, tool schemas, conversation history —byte for byte.
The teams not making headlines about their AI bills have one thing in common.
They manage the layer between their application and their billing endpoint.
Not the model.
Not the prompts.
That layer.
We take 35% of what we save you.
Zero if we save you nothing. 🔒
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