Companies are spending nearly five times more on artificial intelligence than they did a year ago, according to a new enterprise AI report from Menlo Ventures, and autonomous AI agents are the main driver of the increase. Many organisations are finding that AI costs are running past the budgets they set for them. The report also examines how Anthropic and OpenAI are capturing the enterprise market. Pricing is shifting as well, with vendors moving away from per-seat licences towards usage-based billing measured in tokens, the units of text that AI models process. Tying costs to usage makes spending harder to forecast. The same episode covers a sharp market selloff, uncertainty over Anthropic's planned IPO, and a METR report on AI accelerating AI research itself. For Australian businesses and professionals, the immediate issue is budgeting rather than a change in what the tools can do. Teams adopting agent-based tools should set usage limits and track token costs per project before rolling them out, since usage-based bills can rise quickly. If those agents handle personal information, the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles still apply, so check what data goes to third-party AI providers and where it is stored. For most organisations, a small, measured pilot is a more practical first step than a wholesale move to agents.