Nearly Half of Executives Are Scaling Back Agent Deployments as Costs Blow Past Benefits

A KPMG survey and a string of enterprise anecdotes point to the same problem: usage-based pricing on autonomous agents is producing bills nobody budgeted for, with Uber reportedly burning its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April.

The free-money phase of agent deployment is ending, and the numbers are getting ugly. Nearly half of executives have delayed or scaled back AI-agent deployments because costs exceeded benefits, according to a KPMG survey surfaced by @TosinOwadokun. The most quotable data point in that thread: Uber reportedly burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April — a four-month spend of a full-year allocation.

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