Tokenmaxxing was just a way to force employees to start leveraging AI in a meaningful way. For companies that have measured performance based on token spend, they can now dial it back. Employees have learned to leverage AI for things they wouldn’t have prior. Now they know what’s possible and what’s not. No one is stupid enough to always measure performance based on token spend and have unlimited budget. It was always a temporary thing to transition the employees to a new world. Management felt like employees weren't leveraging AI fast enough. That's why in 2025, there were many mainstream articles about how CEOs were forcing their employees to use AI or get fired. Tokenmaxxing was just the other extreme. Companies will arrive at an equilibrium. There's no need to overthink this. Edit: One reply cited this X post as an example of why management needed to do this. Trying to change a company with hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of employees is hard. You have to send one simple message at a time. x.com/danluu/status/1487228574608211969…

Dan Luu at MS: x.com/danluu/status/1487228574608211969…

>I believe what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in _insert whatever_ as “extremely simple” somewhat combatively. github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10… also twitter.com/danluu/status/1487228574608… "Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale" aka Nobody at Microsoft is able to do more than one thing at a time anymore.