We (not Uber) set up a monitoring portal (litellm) to manage this. Some users are burning through a surprising amount, hitting what we considered sane daily limits within their first hour. One person asked a single query that cost $30 .
Individual consumers of AI are riding free on this as the big AI players jostle for position and valuation.
Will that bubble burst or gradually deflate? Or keep growing longer? Nobody knows, or if they do they’re investing cleverly and keeping their mouth shut.
I would be interested in the real world costs, what was the value of your daily limit per user and how much would you say is typical? I presume the $30 query was an outlier, otherwise it would be more efficient to hire twice as many people than use AI unless they only run a single query a day.
It’s about market share (“Your first hit is free…” marketing), but you’re probably seeing only one aspect.
They’re already charging very real money for subscription users, especially enterprise.
Uber spent $3.4bn, their entire budget for AI fees for 2026, within the first four months of this year - that’s real money by anyone’s definition.
We (not Uber) set up a monitoring portal (litellm) to manage this. Some users are burning through a surprising amount, hitting what we considered sane daily limits within their first hour. One person asked a single query that cost $30 .
Individual consumers of AI are riding free on this as the big AI players jostle for position and valuation.
Will that bubble burst or gradually deflate? Or keep growing longer? Nobody knows, or if they do they’re investing cleverly and keeping their mouth shut.
I would be interested in the real world costs, what was the value of your daily limit per user and how much would you say is typical? I presume the $30 query was an outlier, otherwise it would be more efficient to hire twice as many people than use AI unless they only run a single query a day.