Amazon reportedly saw AI costs balloon to catastrophic levels, blowing past budget by 860%; Amazon pushes back, saying it was a small case and 200 million yen is a rounding error

At an internal meeting, Amazon shared that some Claude Sonnet-based projects exceeded budgets by 860%, spending about $1.8 million before failing.

Other AI efforts, including a financial audit tool and a logistics improvement project, also incurred unexpected extra costs, highlighting rising AI spend.

Amazon said these cases are a small share of overall work and that it is building stronger monitoring and guardrails for AI use.

The episode underscores that for large companies, AI adoption requires tight cost control and oversight, not just productivity gains.