**The big picture:** Finance software firm Esker is now factoring AI token consumption into employee expense planning after blowing past its AI budget, highlighting a broader industry challenge with unpredictable AI costs. **Why it matters:** As AI adoption accelerates, managing its escalating and often hidden costs becomes critical for workforce planning, budgeting, and demonstrating ROI for talent acquisition and development initiatives. **Between the lines:** - Esker's AI costs ran four times over budget this year due to increased usage and changing provider pricing. - A recent survey found 72% of finance leaders overspent on AI, and 65% struggled to link AI usage to business outcomes. - Agentic AI systems can multiply token consumption by up to 100 times, exacerbating cost control issues. **Staffing & HR impact:** Unpredictable AI costs can strain HR budgets for talent tech and training, requiring new methods to track and justify AI investments as part of total employee cost, impacting gross margins and resource allocation. **The bottom line:** Companies must develop sophisticated models to track AI consumption per employee and function to balance investment with demonstrable productivity and revenue growth.