AI costs are rising for businesses even as tokens get cheaper | The Business | ABC NEWS
AI costs are rising for Australian businesses even as tokens get cheaper. That’s pushing firms to weigh up what value they are getting from the technology.
Stu Scotis, AI leader for consulting firm Deloitte, said the equation of how to spend an IT budget is getting tougher. He says the current conversations are around “tokens”: units of data processed by AI to complete tasks. Complex requests use more tokens.
The cost of tokens has plummeted in recent years, with increased competition, more efficient chips and more supply. An unprecedented amount of data centre construction has increased the computing power available in the world. Despite this trend, what companies are spending on AI is rising. That is because firms are finding new tasks for AI to take on, leading to increasingly difficult computations, requiring more tokens per request.
AI expert Jon Whittle has warned the “scattergun” approach business has taken to using AI means the cost calculations are becoming more difficult, even as the price of tokens falls. Professor Whittle, a former technical lead at NASA, director of CSIRO’s AI capability and founder of Australia’s National AI Centre, said a particular issue was that AI itself did a poor job at estimating the amount of tokens required.
Daniel Ziffer talks to HR software company HiBob head of people and culture, Anna Volkova about how the business is evaluating AI and looks at the technology spend of the Commonwealth Bank. CBA increased spending from $2.3 billion in the 2025 financial year to $2.4 billion in this most recent financial year. It lists savings too. “Measured gross benefits from AI use cases, including reinvested capacity, were around $200 million in FY26,” its results presentation noted.
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Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-24/ai-costs-rise-for-australian-business-despite-cheaper-tokens/106995044
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