OpenAI mulls AI price war with Anthropic. It’s a big risk for tech stocks.

ChatGPT-developer OpenAI is considering significantly lowering the price for tokens—the basic unit of AI consumption—to compete with rival Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The potential price cut comes amid recent reports that multiple technology companies, including Uber Technologies, have faced unexpectedly high bills for AI usage. Several of those reports were associated with Anthropic’s Claude, which is often used to operate so-called agents—AI which can carry out multistep tasks independently.

“There’s a term for the pattern that drove these situations: tokenmaxxing. The organizational push to use as much AI as possible, as fast as possible,” said Neil Dhar, a senior vice president at IBM Consulting. “It emerged from two years of competitive anxiety, where the pressure to adopt AI outpaced serious consideration of long-term return on investment.”