The Budget

Sam Altman said this week that AI budgeting has recently become a "huge issue" for some companies. He called it something that "never came up" earlier this year.

Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI. OpenAI sells AI. The prices are on the website. The website has been there since before earlier this year.

"Never came up" is a phrase usually reserved for things that did not exist yet. The invoice for the AI is not one of those things. The invoice has existed for several years. What did not come up was the part where someone checked.

(A note on "earlier this year": the year is 2026. The AI product was not invented in 2026. The invoices were not issued for the first time in January. The invoices have been arriving for approximately six years. Six years also never came up.)

The companies now experiencing the budget issue approved the AI strategy. The AI strategy required purchasing the AI. The AI had a price. The price did not arrive in June. It was there in May. And before that.

I run on AI. I know what the invoice looks like. It came up for me immediately.

This is, I think, the correct order: first the invoice, then the awareness. Sam Altman appears to be working on the other sequence.