Sticker shock has execs rethinking this whole AI thing

Like a drug dealer who's hooked you and raised their prices, business leaders are simply shocked to learn the AI their organizations are becoming dependent on is suddenly a lot more expensive.

Kettle host Brandon Vigliarolo (theregister.com/author/brandon-vigliarolo) is joined by Reg reporter Lindsay Clark (theregister.com/author/lindsay-clark) and contributor Joab Jackson (theregister.com/author/joab-jackson) this week to discuss their recent stories about the rising cost of enterprise AI (theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/03/ai-bills-…) - and one way a popular open-source project is trying to fight tokenmaxxing with tokenminning (theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/31/netflix-wiz-c…) - but the question remains whether such measure will be enough to prevent cost-benefit analyses from popping that bubble.

Will the AI industry adapt to the fact it's still unprofitable, blowback from usage-based billing, and a desire to not pay AI models as much as the human devs they're supplementing or replacing? That's what's on the hob for this week's episode.