Survey: AI costs force businesses to shift strategies
Artificial intelligence adoption is rising among businesses, but so is the cost of implementation.
The new EY US AI Pulse Survey from Ernst & Young LLP revealed that 82% of senior leaders whose organization is investing in AI say their organization is concerned about AI token usage (units of data AI models use to process the amount of inputs and generate outputs) and related costs.
An almost universal 98% of those investing in AI and using tools that require AI tokens say token usage and related costs have caused their organization to reconsider their approach. More than a third (37%) say their organization's AI token usage and related costs have caused their organization to reconsider the scope of their organization's AI rollout by expanding it, compared with 15% considering reducing it.
Nearly three-in-10 (29%) are speeding up the pace of their organization's AI rollout compared with the 15% that are slowing it down.
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"'AI saves time' is no longer a sufficient business case when the costs are mounting and difficult to ascertain over the long run," said Dan Diasio, EY Global’s AI consulting leader. "Companies are showing signs of reckoning with setting priorities rather than merely driving adoption. And those priorities must be focused on doing different things, not the same things differently."
In last year’s EY US AI Pulse Survey, more than a third (35%) of senior leaders whose organizations were investing in AI anticipated spending $10 million or more on AI by this point. Now, only 23% actually report spending at that level today. Similarly, while a year ago 18% planned to commit 50% or more of their total budget to AI by this point, EY found that only 3% have done so today.
Despite increased costs, AI implementation is proving to be valuable for companies. Ninety-eight percent of senior leaders whose organization is investing in AI say they have seen a positive ROI from their AI initiatives. Senior leaders at organizations that commit 25% or more of their total budget toward AI investments are more likely than those spending at lower levels to say their organization experienced significant positive ROI in cybersecurity (45% vs. 32%) and customer satisfaction (41% vs. 31%).
"Unlocking the value of AI at scale requires a robust governance framework which operates at machine speed in order to build internal confidence and stakeholder trust," said George Haggar, EY Americas risk consulting leader. "Those guardrails serve as a catalyst for organizations to safely accelerate, confidently reimagine their future and truly drive enterprise value."
Methodology
EY US commissioned a third-party vendor to conduct the fifth wave of the EY AI Pulse Survey. The online survey was conducted among 534 senior business leaders defined as U.S. employed decision makers (senior VP and up) in the health, life sciences, energy, technology media and telecommunications , government and public sector, consumer products & retail, advanced manufacturing and mobility, financial services, private equity, and real estate, hospitality and construction industries.
This fifth wave was fielded between April 24 and May 17, 2026. The margin of error at a 95% confidence interval for the total sample is +/- 4 percentage points.
