Vol.007 — The AI Budget Trap: Why Speed Without Planning Will Cost You.
Date: 2026-04-17 | Newsletter
Key Summary
Uber’s CTO admitted publicly that AI costs “blew away” projected budgets after the company gamified Claude Code adoption with internal leaderboards — driving 11% of live back-end updates to be AI-written in three months, with R&D spend rising 9% to $3.4 billion. Zenta uses this as a warning for every ASEAN business owner: AI charges by consumption, not by seat. There is no ceiling unless you build one. The trap is speed without planning — treating R&D costs and ROI-generating costs as the same line item. His five-step framework at Functional AI Partners: identify the highest-ROI use case first, run a tech-feasibility demo as R&D to measure actual token cost, move to full deployment in that one area only, match the model to the job (stop using a Ferrari to go grocery shopping), and track ROIs for at least two years. The underpinning stat: 71% of executives at billion-dollar companies say organizational readiness — not the technology — is the primary barrier to AI performance. Only 11% blame the tech. The AI works. The planning is what’s missing. Do it simple. Plan before you scale.