Spilling the Tea on HR Tech - Why unpredictability in AI pricing unpredictability is a big threat to your HR tech budget and what vendors are doing about it.

In this episode of Spilling the Tea on HR Tech, Cliff Stevenson and Allison Williams, Director of Research Programs at Sapient Insights Group, Anthropic's acquisition of Stainless, the SDK and MCP server tooling company, and what that consolidation means for organizations building on agentic AI. They also dig into the growing tension around AI cost structures, particularly the unpredictability of usage-based pricing and what that pressure is producing across vendors from Cornerstone to Paychex.  The hosts also cover workforce entry challenges for young workers, a significant expansion of Pell Grant eligibility to short-term trade certifications, and a fintech CEO who fired his entire HR team and then claimed the problems disappeared. Key points covered include: ↪️ AI usage-based pricing is creating real budget stress for organizations, with data showing eight in ten IT leaders reported unexpected charges from consumption-based models. The unpredictability of costs, not the costs themselves, is the core problem. ↪️ Cornerstone's Workforce AI and Paychex's WISE platform both reflect a shift away from transactional queries toward intelligence layers that connect skills, learning, and workforce data to business outcomes. ↪️ Anthropic's acquisition of Stainless consolidates SDK and MCP server tooling under one roof, which raises vendor concentration risk for any organization building on agentic AI infrastructure. ↪️The U.S. Department of Education's expansion of Pell Grants to cover programs as short as eight weeks signals a meaningful shift in how workforce entry pathways are being supported at the federal level, with a goal of reaching an additional 100,000 students within eight years. The 29th annual HR Systems Survey is now open through June 24th. Add your organization's voice to the largest HR tech survey in the industry at the link below. LINK TO SURVEY Don’t miss this exciting thought leader conversation! Follow the hosts and companies mentioned below: Sapient Insights Group Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn Cliff Stevenson Twitter | LinkedIn  Allison Williams LinkedIn The HR Channel Instagram | LinkedIn WRKdefined Instagram | LinkedIn