Rippling has launched AI Spend Console, a tool designed to help employers monitor and limit corporate spending on artificial intelligence while assessing whether it improves staff productivity. The product emerged after the HR software company found it was spending millions of dollars on AI tokens at a rate that threatened to consume a large share of its research and development budget.

In March, Rippling projected that AI-token expenditure would reach 40% of its R&D payroll budget, having risen by 80% month on month; continued growth could have brought it to 90% within a year. Its analysis found that 10–15% of employees generated about 60% of AI spending, including one engineer using $50,000 a month, prompting the company to negotiate spending caps, use cheaper models where suitable and build an AI gateway to route tasks to more cost-effective systems.