Anthropic says huge AI bill was a billing system glitch, no actual charge

Anthropic recently responded to a huge AI bill incident, saying it was caused by a billing system glitch and no actual charge was made. A developer in Korea received two bills from Anthropic for $1.6 million and $16.62 million, but his Claude API dashboard showed $0. Anthropic admitted it was a billing system error. While no money was taken from the bank, the system sent multiple charge attempts, freezing the developer's credit card. The developer sent 15 emails (now 18) through customer support and other channels, and only got an auto-reply after 4 days saying the issue was passed to a real person. The developer joked that the "upgraded to human handling" message was still an automated email.