New Delhi, May 29 -- Investors are starting to scrutinize how AI startups optimize the cost of using models offered by OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, considering it an indicator of founder discipline and warning that such expenses can surge and hurt how they build, scale and monetize their products.

According to investors, excessive usage of AI tools without a clear strategy often signals inefficient product design or a lack of infrastructure ownership and reveals whether a company has built proprietary systems or is merely reselling another company's intelligence layer.

A startup at pre-seed funding stage that cannot articulate its usage economics could be an exemption because its product is still being defined. However, those at Series ...