AI Research "Token Costs – What Customers are Saying" Keirstead

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AI Research "Token Costs – What Customers are Saying" Keirstead

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AI Research Equities

AmericasToken Costs – What Customers are Saying

Software

Karl Keirstead

Summary Analyst

The pushback to token-maxxing – enterprises suffering from sticker shock as employee karl.keirstead@ubs.com

use of AI coding agents and other tools drive higher-than-expected token or compute +1-310-734 2455

costs – is now coming up regularly in investor conversations, as it raises the risk that the Taylor McGinnis

diffusion rate of AI technology in enterprises could hit a wall or at least slow, impacting Analyst

all AI-exposed stocks. Our preferred method of getting at the truth in such debates is to taylor.mcginnis@ubs.com

ask IT execs at enterprise customers for their unvarnished views. We offer a dozen or so +1-212-713 1332

preliminary conversations in this report and conclude that the risk may be less than Roger Boyd

meets the eye. Analyst

roger.boyd@ubs.com

What We Heard +1-212-713 1256

We’d flag: 1. AI token/compute costs have become a real concern for ~60% of the Radi Sultan, CFA

enterprises we spoke to (a material percentage, this is not a made-up media story). 2. Analyst

Most of these organizations already have or will soon introduce some form of guardrails radi.sultan@ubs.com

+1-212-882 0094

in place to throttle compute/token consumption. 3. Some customers expressed a

reluctance to materially limit or throttle AI use beyond the obvious elimination of real

waste, as they’re squarely focused on trying to drive AI adoption in their organizations

(“we don’t want to throttle them” and “our aim is to just get our employees to start

using AI”). These customers are optimizing/cutting other areas of their IT spend to