Microsoft Engineer's AI Spending Hits $28,000 in a Single Month

After a long period of encouraging AI adoption, Microsoft began urging employees to limit their AI usage earlier this month. In an email to staff, Executive Vice President Jay Parikh asked engineers to focus on business outcomes rather than maximizing AI token usage. To extract greater value from token investments, Microsoft set OpenAI's GPT-5.

6, which is cheaper than Anthropic models, as its default internal model. According to voluntarily submitted AI usage bills, one employee in the Customer and Partner Solutions department spent $28,000 over 28 days; several employees spent over $10,000; the median spend was about $300 per 28 days, with a few departments spending only tens of dollars on AI; and the CoreAI department recorded the highest median AI spend at $975.