Fortune: Microsoft Scales Back AI Tooling After Costs Eclipse Per-Employee Spend — Uber, Nvidia Cite Same Pattern

Summary

Fortune reports that Microsoft has begun scaling back internal AI tool usage because the realized cost of token consumption per knowledge worker exceeded what the company would have spent on additional human labor for the same outcome. The article cites the May 22 Microsoft decision to cancel most Claude Code licenses six months after a broad rollout, and connects it to two other corroborating data points: Uber exhausted its full 2026 internal AI coding budget within four months of incentivizing