DeepSeek Dials Up the Pressure on OpenAI and Anthropic With Open-Source Inference Tool

Not so long ago, many businesses were urging employees to use AI as much as humanly possible. But as AI bills have ballooned, token-maxxing has yielded to old-fashioned belt-tightening. The consulting giant Accenture, which earlier this year reportedly told senior staff they could either start using AI or kiss their chances of being promoted to leadership goodbye, recently ordered many employees to cap their monthly Claude spending to $29 per month, according to 404 Media. AI developers are starting to get the memo: lower costs, or get left behind. That pressure has grown thanks to the proliferation of powerful open-source models from China which are drastically cheaper to both train and run.