Unlimited AI tokens, a $10,000 bill and 285,000 wasted lines: Deloitte finds 53% of CFOs only see AI costs when the invoice arrives
alex_verem · x · 2026-10-26
- Reposting @mardehaym's anecdote: an engineer with uncapped AI tokens racked up a $10,000 bill and generated 300,000 lines of code, of which the client project used only 15,000. Finance paid the invoice; nobody asked about the other 285,000 lines — by lines of code, he was the team's "most productive" engineer.
- Cited Deloitte survey of 200 CFOs at $1B+ revenue companies: 53% only see AI costs once the bill arrives, and 74% take days to weeks to shut down an overrun.
Takeaway: burning tokens doesn't equal delivering value; enterprises lack real-time AI usage monitoring and cost controls.
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