{"id":1100491,"date":"2026-07-20T12:09:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1100491\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T12:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:09:20","slug":"tokenmaxxing-didnt-die-it-mutated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1100491\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokenmaxxing Didn\u2019t Die. It Mutated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">A fascinating new entry in the Wall Street Journal\u2019s CIO Journal column looks at what one might think would be t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/cio-journal\/meet-the-companies-shelling-out-for-top-ai-models-e1fe3375?mod=cio-journal_lead_story\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he aftermath of the tokenmaxxing craze<\/a>, in which companies spend as much money as possible on AI compute\u2014but the Journal finds at least a couple businesses still acting profligate in the extreme, preferring in this case to spend a ton\u2014but on premium-priced frontier models only.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The CEO of Twilio, a company that makes automation software that lets apps call and text people, summarizes the mood of tokenmaxxing backlash in tech right now. \u201cThe big question every company, including Twilio, has to reckon with is: Are we truly driving ROI [return on investment] with our AI usage? There will come a time when the concept of \u2018tokenmaxxing\u2019 will be remembered as completely reckless,\u201d he told the Journal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">However, Shopify in particular isn\u2019t having it. Apparently engineers aren\u2019t allowed to use anything that\u2019s not a frontier model, meaning use something expensive like OpenAI\u2019s GPT-5.6 Sol or Anthropic\u2019s Fable 5 or GTFO. Farhan Thawar, who heads engineering at that company tells the journal, \u201cI typically am not as worried about token cost because I\u2019m learning faster than I would have without the tokens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Meanwhile, the founder of an AI voice startup called Olive, Bill Nguyen, sounds like an old fashioned tokenmaxxer. He apparently told the Journal that in the past month he has managed to use\u2014mostly on his own\u2014a breathtaking 774 billion AI tokens. The estimated cost of those tokens is\u00a0$4.5 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">And, again, it\u2019s frontier models only, Nguyen says. \u201cIf time to market and competitive risk is more important, and you\u2019re willing to spend for it, there\u2019s no way you\u2019ll choose anything other than a frontier model,\u201d he tells the Journal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The frontier only, just like the tokenmaxxers, sound like the true believers in this religion. To compromise, and believe a non-frontier model would be worth using would show lukewarm faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fascinating new entry in the Wall Street Journal\u2019s CIO Journal column looks at what one might think&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1100492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,46818,4806,53,254046,16,15],"class_list":["post-1100491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-shopify","tag-silicon-valley","tag-technology","tag-tokenmaxxing","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116952233585210406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1100492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}