When companies like Google and Microsoft can afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on AI, some IT experts have questioned how SMBs can tap into the revolution. Many AI projects have huge upfront costs — up to $200,000 for coding assistants, $1 million to embed generative AI in custom apps, $6.5 million to fine-tune gen AI models, and $20 million to build custom models from scratch, according to recent estimates from Gartner. Those costs don’t include recurring costs, which can run into the thousands of dollars per user each year. At the same time, many company executives believe AI w…