OpenAI and Anthropic face spending-driven growth slowdown

CNBC reports that enterprise customers are tightening AI spending and shifting from "tokenmaxxing" toward efficiency, a change that could slow revenue growth for OpenAI and Anthropic. CNBC cites a D.A. Davidson analyst, Gil Luria, warning that "some of their largest enterprise customers may start limiting their out-of-control token spend." The article profiles Lindy, whose CEO Flo Crivello says the startup moved 100% of its traffic off Anthropic's Claude models to Chinese provider DeepSeek, which Crivello said cut the company's costs dramatically. CNBC also notes that open-source models and efficiency-focused offerings from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are presenting lower-cost alternatives. Editorial analysis: Industry practitioners should expect cost-per-inference and model-efficiency metrics to become higher-priority procurement criteria.