Stephen is Tom's Hardware's News Editor with almost a decade of industry experience covering technology, having worked at TechRadar, iMore, and even Apple over the years. He has covered the world of consumer tech from nearly every angle, including supply chain rumors, patents, and litigation, and more. When he's not at work, he loves reading about history and playing video games. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-24/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Stephen Warwick Social Links Navigation News Editor Stephen is Tom's Hardware's News Editor with almost a decade of industry experience covering technology, having worked at TechRadar, iMore, and even Apple over the years. He has covered the world of consumer tech from nearly every angle, including supply chain rumors, patents, and litigation, and more. When he's not at work, he loves reading about history and playing video games.
Air2004 "While we may never know the true identity of the company said to have spent $500 million on Claude last month, the very scale of the overspend narrows it down to only the very largest corporations globally." Or a Now bankrupt one. Reply
ggeeoorrggee Air2004 said: Or a Now bankrupt one. Indeed. How much fun was the Friday company meeting after that move? "Good news! We're ready to ship! Bad news! We're bankrupt as of last week!" I have dabbled in some AI using an NVidia Spark which is a closed, limited sandbox, but I always wonder if these companies that use massive online AI services just don't have any "trade secret" internal code. How do they ensure that the AI system isn't tucking everything it sees away for inevitable re-use like an employee with no NDA? Also, the reverse worries me: if I give the AI agents a sufficiently complex and specific problem or I'm attempting to build a better mouse trap, how do I know that the agent isn't raiding the patent office to give me a solution that then results in me being on the hook for a patent violation? They've been trained on stolen — or, at best, inappropriately used — information so how can I trust what they present as a design solution? Reply
SirWired No, it wasn't Amazon. Xitter users are idiots. If it was Amazon, the news would not have been attributed to some unnamed "AI Consultant." Amazon does not need some outside consultant to evaluate their AI spending patterns. Reply
SeñorHoudini I remember way back to a few months ago when companies were gleefully sharing their leaderboards for highest token usage. I'm not so sure that I believe that this company simply forgot to turn on usage limits. Reply
CelicaGT ggeeoorrggee said: Indeed. How much fun was the Friday company meeting after that move? "Good news! We're ready to ship! Bad news! We're bankrupt as of last week!" I have dabbled in some AI using an NVidia Spark which is a closed, limited sandbox, but I always wonder if these companies that use massive online AI services just don't have any "trade secret" internal code. How do they ensure that the AI system isn't tucking everything it sees away for inevitable re-use like an employee with no NDA? Also, the reverse worries me: if I give the AI agents a sufficiently complex and specific problem or I'm attempting to build a better mouse trap, how do I know that the agent isn't raiding the patent office to give me a solution that then results in me being on the hook for a patent violation? They've been trained on stolen — or, at best, inappropriately used — information so how can I trust what they present as a design solution? My employer no longer allows the use of third party AI for this very reason. None of the big players could give any legally binding guarantees that our IP wouldn't slip out of the barn. We also found it fell well short of its promises, relative to how much it cost. For general use, or consumer end use, it's a shambling corpse. Nearly all "engagement" is through AI summaries and drivel like that. The technology has merits, but it's proving to not be cost effective for most applications. Reply
Trake_17 CelicaGT said: My employer no longer allows the use of third party AI for this very reason. None of the big players could give any legally binding guarantees that our IP wouldn't slip out of the barn. We also found it fell well short of its promises, relative to how much it cost. For general use, or consumer end use, it's a shambling corpse. Nearly all "engagement" is through AI summaries and drivel like that. The technology has merits, but it's proving to not be cost effective for most applications. Absolutely must run the models on private hardware. If your business can't do that, and it's work involves any significant degree of IP, you don't use the cloud services. Period. Dot. End of discussion. Reply
Trake_17 "The more recent report says corporate AI adoption has found several issues with AI, with human workers turning to automating dreary and mundane tasks they don't like doing, rather than valuable or meaningful work." This is the part that has me worried about all of this. Inherent to this statement is that humans aren't supposed to be using AI to free themselves up for more important work. Humans are supposed to use AI to to the important work leaving the mundane for themselves. No thanks. Reply
ggeeoorrggee Trake_17 said: Absolutely must run the models on private hardware. If your business can't do that, and its work involves any significant degree of IP, you don't use the cloud services. Period. Dot. End of discussion. Yet every other cloud service is capable of legal assurance of guarding our data. How poorly designed and understood are these AI systems that Anthropic, Meta, et al can’t build walled gardens for proprietary data? I’d say it’s a major failing of the design of AI but that ignores the more obvious and nefarious answer: the companies don’t want to do this because their business model is built on and future viability depends on stealing other peoples’ work without compensation. The ROI for AI investment drops even further into the red if a company needs to build out a special mini data center. Reply
edrandall Or perhaps this whole thing is a headline-grabbing exaggeration of what could happen in order to sell reports and consultancy services. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/mystery-company-accidentally-blew-usd500-million-on-claude-in-a-single-month-failed-to-put-usage-limit-on-licenses-for-employees#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
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- Hermes Unlocks Self-Improving AI Agents, Powered by NVIDIA RTX PCs and DGX Spark
- TP-Link announces its first consumer Wi-Fi 8 roadmap — Archer 8 routers scheduled to arrive in October 2026, pending FCC approval
- Microsoft veteran recalls the last time Nvidia and Arm was the future of Windows — shares a video of ‘the first time Windows ran on Nvidia Tegra Arm’ from 2010
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at Dell Technologies World: ‘Demand Is Going Parabolic, Utterly Parabolic’
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.