Managing AI Coding Costs at Scale

Software Engineering Daily · Oct 27, 2026 · 1h 1m

Over the past couple of years, companies raced to get their employees using AI, often encouraging them to lean on it as much as possible. However, as AI coding tools spread through engineering teams, many companies watched their AI bills explode. That kind of runaway cost growth can threaten a business, so the new challenge is capturing the productivity gains from AI without the spending spiraling out of control.

Databricks is a data and AI company that hit this problem early, running AI tools across thousands of its own engineers. Rather than clamp down on usage, the team built a set of…