strategy

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Now that Anthropic’s filed its S-1, people are asking the big questions: Is the company overvalued? Can its growth last? Is AI a bubble? It’s also likely more than one CFO is thinking, “I wonder what this is going to do to my Claude bills?”

That’s anybody’s guess, Justin Etkin, CEO and cofounder of spend management platform Tropic, told CFO Brew. But he doesn’t expect dramatic price hikes in the near future.

That’s because customers treat LLMs more like commodities than like traditional software, Etkin said, readily switching between models and offerings from rival labs. As Siqi Chen, CEO of CFO.ai, told us, “Internally, for developer purposes, we probably use Anthropic models more than OpenAI at this point. But it changes from week to week. Whoever has the newest models that week, we will go ahead and spend all of our budget on there.”

Price wars ahead? “Pricing does play a major factor in who’s ultimately going to be the preferred option,” Etkin said. Competition between AI companies is already causing price wars, he added, pointing out that OpenAI made “some very drastic price cuts” when Anthropic’s growth began to take off, “and Anthropic had to respond.”

CFOs and CIOs have also grown more sophisticated and stricter about token usage in the past year, Etkin said. “The process for accessing and requesting more tokens is very secure,” he said, predicting that we won’t see as many stories of companies receiving shockingly high AI bills as we did early in 2026.

But the same phenomenon may throttle LLM labs’ growth. Keep reading for more.—CV

      

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strategy

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What do erasers, Wite-Out, and tariff refunds all have in common? Yep, you guessed it: They help you fix things.

At least, that’s how many companies used their one-time tariff reimbursements as they rolled out earlier this year. And for some of those that did, like retailer e.l.f. Beauty, the benefits are still carrying into Q2 2027.

In 2025, e.l.f. Beauty raised prices to offset tariffs, a significant move given that it has “only taken three price increases in the company’s history,” as CFO Mandy Fields told us this month.

When tariff refunds entered the scene, e.l.f. implemented tests to see how consumers would react to price reductions, ultimately landing on permanent price cuts on around 10% of its lineup, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“We paid $60 million in IEEPA tariffs and we’ve received about $52 million back in terms of refunds, which we have reinvested in both marketing, largely across the portfolio, and then also in pricing,” Fields explained.

Keep reading to find out how that’s worked out for them.—NP

      

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The Federal Trade Commission, along with 20 states, filed a lawsuit against Dollar General last week for allegedly charging customers “more at the register than the prices displayed on shelves, price tags, and advertisements.”

“Dollar General has betrayed the trust of millions of American consumers and imposed significant financial harm on communities and consumers who are already struggling to make their paychecks last,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.

The agency defines these disparities as “unlawful overcharges,” which are a result of the company providing “insufficient safeguards to prevent the practice.” The basis for these claims are “tens of thousands of complaints” from customers across the country claiming Dollar General did not honor the displayed price, according to the FTC.

Read the full story on Retail Brew.—AV

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads

Stat: 4%. That’s how much Nvidia’s stock fell on Monday, following reports of CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with a businesswoman who intelligence agencies believe to be a Chinese spy; the company has launched an investigation. (CNBC)

Quote: “Kaiser Ng has decided to pursue a new venture after more than five years at Binance, with a transition plan implemented over the last six months. We wish him the best in his next chapter.”—Binance co-CEO Yi He, in a statement announcing the crypto exchange’s CFO would be leaving the company; the announcement came just days after hackers stole over $6 billion in crypto from Binance (Bloomberg)

Read: The unintended consequences of a nepo hire. (the Wall Street Journal)

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