Companies across the country are coming around to a radical idea with the potential to upend the industry powering the global economy: They don't have to blow their budgets on AI. Fed up with ballooning costs, companies big and small are starting to use lower-priced models, including some built in China.

In many cases, they are adding the new, cheaper models alongside OpenAI and Anthropic's products, shopping a la carte for their artificial intelligence. This mixing of models is changing the economics and power players of the industry as enterprises optimize for specific use cases rather than defaulting to the most expensive options.

At Cursor, a startup that stands to benefit from this corporate epiphany because its software works with all models, Mike Saeks puts it simply: The most powerful and expensive AI models aren't necessary for relatively mundane tasks. The shift signals a maturation in enterprise AI adoption where cost efficiency increasingly drives procurement decisions.