Companies like Citigroup and Adobe restrict AI use as costs spiral

Leaked internal documents show that companies including Atlassian, Adobe, and Amazon are limiting employee access to high-performance AI models to control surging costs. One company's monthly AI spending tripled to over $15 million. The shift comes as AI providers move from fixed annual fees to usage-based billing.

Citigroup has blocked access to flagship models like Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5, and set up budget monitoring. Adobe dropped its unlimited Claude plan. Atlassian's cost dashboard shows AI spending jumped from $5 million in August 2025 to $15 million in May 2026.

GitHub plans to switch to open-source models and individual usage billing. Amazon removed its internal AI usage leaderboard, and employees soon hit token limits. Entertainment companies also face budget overruns, with one developer using nearly half of the company's allocation.

Consulting giant Accenture found that much of the token consumption came from employees using AI for non-essential tasks like converting PDFs to slides. Despite the cost issues, Accenture continues to push AI internally, even using it to predict World Cup match outcomes.