JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce are now restricting access to the most expensive AI models as usage-based billing makes technology budgets harder to forecast. JPMorgan spends approximately $700 million a year on AI and caps access to Claude Code at $2,000 per month for each engineer, while CIBC found that costs can reach C$3,000 per month per employee. This monitoring comes as banks announced 19 new agentic AI use cases in the first quarter of 2026, up from eight in the preceding quarter, while also modernizing legacy systems and strengthening cybersecurity. Citi attributes a 30% to 40% improvement in product-launch speed and a 30% year-over-year reduction in technology-vendor spending to AI, while BBVA reduced the cost of loan approval from €5 to €0.03. For investors, these measures aim to protect margins, but they also signal greater price sensitivity among banks and an increased likelihood of using less expensive models to AI providers.
Source: Read the original article
