AI model waste costs companies millions as employees default to expensive models for trivial tasks

Anthropic and OpenAI's top-tier models cost 100 times more per token than their smallest counterparts, yet many users default to flagship models for all tasks. Internal leaderboards at Meta, Amazon, and Uber drove up AI bills, with Meta employees burning 60 trillion tokens in 30 days under a "Claudeonomics" nickname. Tech columnist Gergely Orosz estimated the cost at roughly $900 million at Anthropic's list prices. Companies can sharply reduce spending by routing tasks to the right model, trimming context, caching, and batching, but many default to expensive models for trivial tasks like generating emails.