In accordance to a column by the New York Instances’ Kevin Roose, staff at corporations together with Meta and OpenAI compete on “inside leaderboards that present what number of tokens[…]every employee consumes.” At Meta particularly (and in addition Shopify), Roose says quantity of A.I. used has develop into a metric that goes into folks’s evaluations, with managers “rewarding employees who make heavy use of A.I. instruments and chastening those that don’t.”
Analogies are tough right here. One is tempted to say it’s like making painters compete to use the most paint, however even when the paint is simply being splattered as rapidly as attainable, it’s at the very least going to be seen when the challenge is achieved. It’s a bit extra like telling troopers to gauge their battlefield success by the variety of bullets fired, however suppressive hearth that doesn’t hit something has its place in battle technique. One of the best analogy I can provide you with is this: it’s like NBA mascots being evaluated by what number of t-shirts they hearth out of their t-shirt cannons, however the t-shirts are made by Hermès.
The ensuing numbers, by way of each tokens and cash, are completely staggering. One OpenAI engineer, in accordance to Roose, burned by means of 210 billion tokens, which Roose equates to 33 Wikipedias. A Swedish software program engineer claims to Roose that his firm spends greater than his wage on his Claude Code tokens alone.
This “tokenmaxxing” pattern clearly stems partly from the use of “claws,” agentic AI platforms like OpenClaw, which are this 12 months’s greatest supposed innovation in AI. OpenClaw’s virality was a part of the huge shift away from OpenAI’s GPT fashions and towards Claude this 12 months by AI fanatics, and OpenAI subsequently hired OpenClaw’s creator, seemingly in a bid to keep its place as the trade chief.
However even when used with out an external claw platform Claude Code is changing into increasingly more like OpenClaw currently, with a characteristic rolling out final week that enables better and better on-the-go vibe coding, by letting customers talk with Claude Code extra simply on their telephones.
We simply launched Claude Code channels, which permits you to management your Claude Code session by means of choose MCPs, beginning with Telegram and Discord.
Use this to message Claude Code instantly from your telephone. pic.twitter.com/sl3BP2BEzS
— Thariq (@trq212) March 19, 2026
The promo even options just a little 4-bit sprite of a lobster, or presumably a crab—a crimson crustacean at any fee—the new image for LLM token profligacy.
However tokenmaxxing speaks to a wider challenge during which these corporations tout the sheer variety of tokens processed as a marker of success. OpenAI president Greg Brockman bragged a few week in the past that the coding-oriented GPT-5.4 processes 5 trillion tokens per day—which, in equity, is sensible as a means to please traders, as a result of tokens value cash.
gpt-5.4 has ramped quicker than another mannequin we have launched in the API: inside per week of launch, 5T tokens per day, dealing with extra quantity than our complete API one 12 months in the past, and reaching an annualized run fee of $1B in net-new income.
it is a good mannequin, strive it out!
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) March 16, 2026
However 5 trillion is an enormous quantity, you may have to admit. Do you know that Ronald McDonald’s Huge Pink Shoe automotive in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade would fit a men’s size 266 foot if it have been to have an precise foot in it? Aren’t huge numbers cool?
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