NEA’s Tiffany Luck says enterprises are still figuring out their AI ROI

NEA partner Tiffany Luck said enterprises are still struggling to measure return on investment from AI, as companies like Uber blew through annual AI budgets and others cut AI tool licenses. Luck discussed the tension between AI hype and ROI on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, noting that startups are stepping in to help track AI spending.

Tokenmaxxing https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/17/tokenmaxxing-is-making-developers-less-productive-than-they-think/ was the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, with CEOs encouraging employees to push AI usage as far as it would go. Then the bill came due https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/05/the-token-bill-comes-due-inside-the-industry-scramble-to-manage-ais-runaway-costs/ . Uber reportedly blew through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their org, and Meta killed its internal leaderboard. This tension between hype and ROI is exactly where NEA partner Tiffany Luck https://www.nea.com/team/tiffany-luck lives these days. She got her start convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, and now she’s all in on AI, especially when it comes to the possibilities for “magic moments” in the consumer business. On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity https://techcrunch.com/podcasts/equity/ podcast, Luck joins Rebecca Bellan to talk about the future of personal agents, her thoughts on this year’s AI IPOs, and how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@TechCrunch , Apple Podcasts https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1215439780 , Overcast https://overcast.fm/itunes1215439780/equity , Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5IEYLip3eDppcOmy5DmphC?si=rZDFHv2sQUul g94iCRgpQ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X https://twitter.com/EquityPod and Threads https://www.threads.net/@equitypod , at @EquityPod.