That’s less than the fully loaded cost of hiring another engineer.

If someone is making the case that it’s helping the team get twice as much work done without hiring more people (which I’m neither agreeing with or disagreeing with) then the bean counters would actually prefer it. Hiring people is messy and expensive. Spending on API costs is a dial that you can turn down later if you need to, without laying anyone off and paying severance.

Well someone would actually have to make that case. So far nobody has been able to.