AI has become the fastest-growing expense in corporate technology budgets, with some firms reporting that AI consumes up to half of their IT spend and cloud computing bills rising 19% in 2025. Unlike previous technology waves tied to subscriptions or virtual machines, AI economics now revolve around tokens - the fundamental unit of AI work where every interaction from model training to inference is measured in tokens, making costs inherently variable and unpredictable. This represents a fundamental shift in how enterprises budget and manage technology costs as AI becomes central to operations.