Most large firms plan higher open-weight AI use to cap bills, study shows

By Leo Marchandon

Nov 12 (Reuters) - Nearly 6 in 10 senior executives at large companies plan to increase their use of cheaper open-weight AI models over the next year as AI bills overshoot budgets, a Capgemini study showed on Thursday.

This trend echoes SAP, whose finance chief last month said it was replacing some of its costliest AI models with cheaper ones where performance held up. Anthropic, which launched its IPO roadshow this week, also warned in its prospectus that customers may shift to cheaper options, including open-weight models.

Open-weight models, like those from DeepSeek or Mistral, can be downloaded and run anywhere, while closed options, like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini models, are only accessible from the cloud.

Some 59% of the surveyed executives said AI spending over the past year had been significantly above their expectations or budgets, by 24% on average, while 53% said they were worried about AI costs — last year, 45% of executives had expressed such concerns.

Open-weight models handled 72% of traffic on OpenRouter, a popular multi-AI provider, in September, though that represented just 27% of AI spending, Capgemini said.

The IT consulting firm said open-weight tokens were on average 87% cheaper than closed ones. Closed models broadly remain in the mix, with half the respondents saying they would retain closed models where the complexity of the task warranted the additional cost.

Capgemini, which is helping companies embed AI into their existing platforms, surveyed 500 executives at enterprises with annual revenue of more than $1 billion in 10 countries.

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)