It is the procurement model. Companies that signed up for a productivity tool are discovering they signed up for a metered utility, and the meter runs when nobody is looking. The fix may be straightforward: capped budgets per engineer, tiered access for high-leverage roles, agent runtime quotas.
Many of the larger buyers are already there. But the implication is that the era of “give every employee a Claude Code seat” is closing, and what replaces it will look more like AWS billing than like Office licences.
Microsoft’s quiet Claude Code retreat and the real cost of enterprise AI
Important for nonprofits (a) to budget; (b) to develop sector resources.