The AI economy: cost pressure reshapes workflows (Sep 2025)

Sep 2025

The AI market in 2025 is shaped by a simple metric: cost per approved asset. Teams don’t care how many images they generated—they care how quickly they got to something shippable.

That pressure is changing workflows. The winning pattern is “batch early, choose early, upscale late.” It reduces wasted compute and speeds up stakeholder reviews.

What we see across teams

- Smaller, intentional provider sets instead of random “try everything”.

- Reusable presets to avoid prompt drift.

- Clear approval gates so work doesn’t bounce between versions.

The result is less iteration noise and more predictable budgets—especially important when multiple people share the same token pool or spend limit.