Pylon CEO Marty Kausas had to make a difficult choice: scale back token spending, or stomach a $1.4 million bill.

Kausas said that his AI software company was fast approaching 150 employees on its Anthropic plan earlier this month, a point where the bill would more than triple. That realization got Kausas to declare the era of unlimited spending over — and he decided to set ceilings for tokens, the units of data that determine how AI is priced, for some of his non-technical employees.

Pylon's VP of finance is now exploring "where we should set caps," Kausas said. "This is just the start."

Leaders like Kausas are weathering a massive workplace shift, as more workers learn to love improved AI tools. Over the past few months, usage has moved from something bosses felt they had to incentivize to something they had to limit, due to skyrocketing costs and the realization that unlimited spending didn't always yield meaningful results.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this month he was blown away by how fast the conversation around AI budgets had changed. At the beginning of the year, "people were totally happy with the amount they were spending," he said. Now, these costs are "a huge issue."

It's not just CEOs and CFOs navigating these new corporate dynamics. For rank-and-file software engineers, part of their job now involves advocating for the compute they need to succeed. Meanwhile, some managers have to barter for their team's tokens, pitching like "Shark Tank." And, to poach red-hot AI talent, hiring managers are guaranteeing candidates tokens to spend.

A cutthroat Hunger Games for AI compute is fast approaching, one where everyone — from the C-suite to junior developers — is a player.

Token-fever whiplash

Max Kan's official job title is "tokenomics analyst."

At the data provider SemiAnalysis, Kan helps build token models for hedge funds and hyperscalers. When I called Kan in May, he was bullish on the impact that deep token budgets could have on the workforce. "It's basically true for everyone that, if you have an employee that's making $100,000 a year, you can probably make them 2x more productive with $10,000 worth of tokens," he said.

Those were the days of tokenmaxxing, when companies sent their engineers diving into token pools like Scrooge McDuck. Companies encouraged token leaderboards, where those at the bottom of the rankings felt pressure to use more AI, and executives across a range of industries couldn't stop talking about it.

The word "tokens" was used in 129 earnings calls in Q2 of 2026, up from 57 calls the prior quarter, according to an analysis performed for Business Insider by business intelligence platform AlphaSense.

Within a matter of weeks, the belt-tightening began. Companies began putting AI budgets on a diet and setting token limits. Coinbase set a cap; so did Walmart. Amazon shut down its internal token leaderboard.

Kan still advocates for big per-engineer allowances — and wonders what workers will think of the rapid discourse shift. He worried that engineers would think: "My boss is adamantly pushing me to do one thing, then I did that thing, and now I'm getting yelled at because I did that thing too well."

"I would definitely feel confused and angry if I were an engineer in those positions," he said.

Leaders across industries — from financial giants like JPMorgan to media conglomerates like Disney — are working to develop cohesive, effective AI policies.

Some firms have always been anti-tokenmaxxing. The enterprise software company Pega is one of them. When I hopped on the phone in May with its CFO and COO, Ken Stillwell, he called the trend an "incredibly self-serving" narrative by the AI companies. His company didn't set numerical token caps, but it did throttle requests that would spend in excess.

When we spoke a month later, as the discourse shifted, Stillwell felt vindicated. "We're quite happy that we're one of many talking about this," he said.

AI spending also continues to soar

Technology and media companies spent an average of $66.29 per employee on AI in May, up from $58.84 in April, according to Ramp's AI Index.

Ara Kharazian, its lead economist, told Business Insider he expected this metric to keep rising, but he spotted early signs of tightening, such as increased use of model routers, which can help better manage costs.

Some companies aren't cutting AI budgets just yet, but they are thinking critically about head count. For instance, MindFort, a Y Combinator-backed AI startup, has six employees. Its CEO, Brandon Veiseh, said the company would've needed 20 employees pre-AI to reach its current scale. Where have those funds gone? Tokens.

"We have to weigh our token-to-people ratio," Veiseh said. "It's not something we think is particularly comfortable or a great feeling to say."

Even though token costs are expected to come down as AI companies like Google increasingly compete on price by offering smaller, more efficient models, these sorts of tradeoffs aren't likely to go away. Often, the cheaper a resource is, the more of it is consumed.

For now, companies are thinking more critically and sometimes taking strategic steps back — but they're hesitant to move too quickly. Kausas, Pylon's CEO, said he wants to prioritize making sure there's a return on investment — and avoid engineer backlash.

"If we told engineers that they were not allowed to use AI products, they would not work here," he said. "It would feel like you were in the Stone Age."

Dawn of the token Hunger Games?

As engineers increasingly learn they might have to battle for their token allocation, team infighting could grow.

Some have compared this to a survival-of-the-fittest scenario. "Coding is now cockroach protein bars and we're all fighting for crumbs," said one coder on X, comparing the dynamic to "The Hunger Games."

Developers are also asking more about tokens during job interviews. Kausas said that applicants had asked him about budgets. AI advisor and AWS alum Allie K. Miller had heard of interviewees getting into the nitty-gritty: "What tier of model will I have access to? Do you have partnerships with AI labs that get us relatively early access?"

It's a sign of a new era where tokens — or at least the number workers want — aren't guaranteed.

Max Christoff, the CTO of legal tech company Everlaw, made the case for giving engineers token caps, but letting them negotiate for bigger budgets. He compared it to using cellular data before unlimited plans. Sometimes you need to spend big on the data, but other times you mindlessly scroll, not realizing how much you're wasting. Christoff wanted all of the former and none of the latter.

"We want to make it easy to ask for more if you can actually use it," Christoff said.

If a company doesn't set token caps, it may also set model restrictions. Russ Fradin, the founder of Larridin, a platform for tracking AI use, was emphatic. "Of course, they will limit who gets to use these tools. It's not even a question," he said.

Fradin compared allocating model access to taking a trip on the company dime. Many are allowed to book an economy flight, but few — if any — are allowed to charter a jet, he said. Access to cutting-edge AI models may be equivalent to the private jet: so expensive that only a few all-stars can do it.

Engineers have good reason to fight for their tokens. Having limited AI access could hurt them in the long run, leaving them less skilled or less marketable in future job searches.

Brock Simon advised companies on AI for Bain & Company before he founded his own startup, Native. He watched as some companies were slow to adopt the technology or restricted access to specific tools and agents, leaving their employees behind the curve.

"It really hurt some people's careers," he said.

Last June, fashion models for the fashion retailer Rainbow received a warning: AI was ramping up, and the number of workers needed would be ramping down.

"You may have already seen some changes taking place both within the studio and on the site," wrote Rainbow's studio manager, Phil Caraway. The company had started "styling certain products, and generating avatars, with the assistance of A.I," he explained, and while he couldn't say for certain whether any freelancers would lose their jobs, he wanted them to "plan accordingly."

"Fewer people will be needed in the long term," Caraway wrote in the previously unreported email. "It is very likely that this Fall will see a huge increase in A.I. use."

Thus began what several models described as a year of anxiety and, later, anger. They could see the company using AI to create synthetic models within view of where they worked, the models told Business Insider. At the same time, the models' days in the New York office began to dwindle, they said, leaving many without work. Nearly a year after that June email, Rainbow has begun rehiring some models — though many remain out of work.

In March of this year, the models began noticing Rainbow marketing images that looked like them, but posed in positions or locations that differed from the photo shoots they had participated in. Many suspected the doppelgängers were the result of AI. The lookalike models cropped up across Rainbow's site, social media, and newsletters. A flurry of emails to Rainbow followed, along with a lawsuit by one model.

As AI technologies improve, workplaces across the country are experimenting with how to use them — and navigating the thorny question of their impact on human jobs. Creative industries like modeling are especially exposed as AI-generated photos and videos improve in quality.

AI is growing more common within the fashion industry. In a 2025 study from the Worker Institute at Cornell University ILR School and Data & Society in partnership with the Model Alliance, researchers said that e-commerce gigs were "more vulnerable to displacement by AI technologies."

Business Insider spoke to multiple Rainbow employees and contractors, all of whom requested anonymity, and also reviewed dozens of email exchanges and images, as well as modeling contracts.

"Rainbow is responsibly evaluating emerging AI technologies in the marketplace, and has and is committed to doing so in a proper manner," David Cost, Rainbow's chief digital officer, wrote in a statement to Business Insider.

In a follow-up email, Cost wrote that "Rainbow's dealings with its employees and independent contractors are private" and that the company disagreed with "much of the purported 'facts.'" He declined to comment on specific questions sent by Business Insider. "Rainbow has acted appropriately and in accordance with its commitments, including contracts signed by models," he added.

Here's how Rainbow's AI model experiment got messy, according to its workers — from a slowdown on human modeling work to contract disputes and hiring some of the models back.

Rainbow, founded in Brooklyn over 90 years ago, has over 800 stores nationwide and is privately owned. The retailer caters to thrifty consumers with steep discounts, similar to Fashion Nova or PrettyLittleThing. It also operates the similar brand KissDon'tTell.

For its e-commerce shoots, the Rainbow team looked for models without agency connections, one former stylist who helped recruit models said. Two models said that they were found on Instagram and had little paid modeling experience. Fees varied by model, though many said they made around $50 an hour.

Three models said that one Rainbow employee told them to be available for five days of work a week. The former stylist said that Rainbow asked its freelancers to be available Monday through Friday, but that it wasn't written into their contracts. Two models said they left their prior jobs for the company.

Partway through 2025, the models began to notice something different in the studio: AI training. Employees would lay out the clothes on a flat board, take photos, and upload them to an AI program called Lica, one employee said. Lica generated fully synthetic AI models — not duplicates of human models — for Rainbow, the employee said.

The AI training caused significant anxiety among the models, they said. Trying to lighten the mood, some models said they would crack dark jokes about the system replacing them. Two models said that they recalled instances where the fit of a garment on their body was compared to an AI avatar, pointing out where the avatar needed to be more realistic.

After Carraway's June email a year ago, the models braced for their work to drop off. For months, several models said that they continued to get consistent bookings. Then, they slowed down, the models said, and by mid-March of this year, the work dried up. Some models submitted their availability but said they received no response.

During that period, two Rainbow employees who are not models said that they went weeks without seeing any human models in the studio.

Meanwhile, the models started spotting their doppelgängers on Rainbow's social media.

The models had previously participated in product shots wearing Rainbow apparel, such as a long floral dress, while photographed in front of plain backgrounds.

The doppelgängers they later noticed looked strikingly similar — the same builds, facial features, and outfits they had worn — but were pictured with their bodies in entirely different positions. The models texted these images back and forth in a group chat. Business Insider viewed over a dozen such images.

The second clause of the contracts many of the models had signed allowed Rainbow to use their images "whether intact or in part, composite or distorted in character or form, cropped or altered, without restrictions as to changes or transformations."

One image that sparked conversation in the group chat showed what the models suspected was an AI lookalike that altered the model's original skin tone. The model and the suspected AI lookalike had some similarities — the hairstyle and placement of the hair part, as well as the accessories and shoes — but also some differences, such as the nose shape.

None of the employees Business Insider spoke to had directly seen the creation or editing of these doppelgängers.

Several of the models who suspected that Rainbow was modifying their likenesses with AI raised issues with the company via email.

One of the models, Francheska Pujols, sued Rainbow on May 22, alleging the images defamed her and caused confusion over her endorsement of the company's products, among other allegations.

Pujols wrote in an affidavit that her contract only covered images captured in photo shoots, and "does not in any way authorize the creation of entirely new images, scenes, poses, or compositions that did not exist in the original content."

Rainbow posted photos of what Pujols said is her AI doppelgänger; in one, she straddles a barstool. Another shows her seated, wearing a short skirt, with one leg raised.

Pujols wrote to Business Insider that she would "never pose with my legs open or position myself in a sexualized manner for the world to see."

"I am extremely emotional and have many sleepless nights with the thought of the altered images of me," Pujols wrote. "I sought a professional aide to help with sleep and reconciliation."

Pujols withdrew her suit on May 29 to pursue a private settlement, her attorney wrote in an affidavit. She refiled the lawsuit on Monday.

"As Rainbow has stated previously in relation to this matter, Ms. Pujols' images were used properly and in accordance with the agreement she signed," Joan McGillycuddy, Rainbow's chief legal officer, wrote in a statement to Business Insider. "There is no violation of her rights."

Rainbow's contracts said the models would receive double their day rate for image use outside that second clause. Some models requested compensation for the suspected AI images but were turned down, according to their messages, which were viewed by Business Insider.

Then, the contract back-and-forth began.

On March 10, amid the work slowdown, Caraway sent an email to the models. "To account for today's rapidly-changing technology and expectations of use, Rainbow has come up with an updated Model Release," Caraway wrote.

One clause in the new contract was particularly controversial — one that the models interpreted as granting Rainbow sweeping AI rights.

The new clause allowed Rainbow to use "various technologies, tools, or production methods now known or later developed, including automated or computer-assisted techniques." The clause should be interpreted "broadly" as long as the company was not "materially misrepresenting the model," the contract read.

Some of the models said they refused to sign it. On March 28, Carraway emailed the models that Rainbow agreed to remove a non-compete clause, but the technology usage clause was presented as a dealbreaker.

"Rainbow cannot adjust the AI clause," Caraway wrote. "In order to continue to be hired, this must be agreed to."

It's not clear if the contract negotiations contributed to or prolonged the work slowdown.

Cost, Rainbow's CDO, hyped up the AI program Lica in an April video reposted by the startup's cofounder.

"It's amazing what the people at Lica have been able to do," he said. "We're using them for product photography. We're also using them for editorial or things that you'd see on a homepage or in an email."

Two staffers said the tool was buggy. Some of the synthetic models' legs were too short, one said; the AI repeatedly generated one synthetic model with a white cardigan over her clothes. Creating an AI image would also take long stretches of re-prompting, they said, often around 15-30 minutes.

Rainbow is no longer using Lica, one staffer said. Lica told Business Insider in a statement that it is "focused on foundational AI research for multimodal design models."

"As part of our research efforts, we provided interested enterprise partners with early access to emerging AI capabilities and model technologies," a Lica representative wrote. "We do not direct, supervise, or control our customers' implementation decisions, and we do not publicly comment on specific customer use cases."

Rainbow began bringing some of its human models back at the end of April, employees said.

This time around, some of the models received an agreement with the following clause: "Company will not create digital replicas, train AI on Model likeness, or generate synthetic images not based on original Content."

Rainbow is still producing images of the AI avatars, one staffer said, but not with Lica.

Cost, the company's chief digital officer, referenced the state of AI experimentation at Rainbow in his LinkedIn job description.

"Every experiment designed to replace a person with AI failed," Cost wrote. "Every experiment designed to give a talented person more capability won, and won bigger than expected."

• Kerry Feeney bid $3,500 to watch the "Summer House" reunion at the house where the show films.
• Feeney split the cost with her longtime friends, who also watch Bravo. She also claimed the biggest bed.
• "We did a lot of laughing, reminiscing, dancing, and staying up late," she said. "It's a chance to relive our youth."

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kerry Feeney, a 44-year-old director of hospital administration from Rockaway, New York. Feeney won one of three nights auctioned off by StayMarquis. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I've been watching Bravo for years. I think it started with "The Real Housewives of New York" back in the day. Every new one gets better and better.

I've watched "Summer House" from the beginning. I love it. When I was first out of college, I had a house in the Hamptons for the summer. It brought me back to my own Hamptons experience: the drama, the partying. It made me feel like I was in my 20s again.

I knew my friends were just as big Bravo fans as I was. We all grew up in Rockaway, for the most part, and have been friends since we were kids. Everybody went their separate ways, and now everyone's back in the neighborhood again as adults. I'd have no problem getting 15 other people to come with me to the house.

The week prior, we couldn't be at the house, but one of our friends owns a bar. We met up there and had a watch party. We had a private room in the back area, ordered food, and watched the show. We stayed for drinks and discussion afterward.

We bid $3,500. I knew that wouldn't be too big a deal to split up the cost among friends and family.

We carpooled in multiple cars. One of my friends was in Long Island, so we picked her up along the way. The drive was two hours, during which we talked about the show. (Pretty much everyone is very anti-Amanda.)

When we arrived, we first made sure the door didn't stick. On the show, they have a very hard time getting in and out of that.

We all arrived at different times, but my group arrived first. We put our bags down, brought in all the alcohol and food that we had for the night, and we went on a little tour by ourselves. We went through the house like little kids, going through every inch.

Kyle and Amanda's bedroom is 10x bigger than it appears on TV. The bathroom has a heated toilet seat. I know! Every time anybody came in after us, we made sure that they went and tested out the toilet.

We brought some chips and appetizers. My one friend made baked ziti. We all brought wine or Surfsides, and the place was stocked with a cooler full of Loverboy. I think we drank every single one.

Because I was the one who did the bidding, I got to pick first. I obviously picked Kyle and Amanda's room because of the bathroom, and because it had the biggest bed. It opened right up into the backyard.

People picked rooms as they showed up. Everyone was so happy to be there, so nobody was fighting over accommodations. Then, we made some drinks and hung out by the pool.

Another surprising thing about the house that you don't see on the show is that there's a movie theater room. It had recliner seats and a huge TV. There were 16 of us, so we thought it would be better to watch it in the living room.

It started at 8 p.m., and nobody was allowed to talk until there was a commercial. There was a lot of shushing. We didn't want to miss anything.

During the commercials, it was heated, but it wasn't a debate. It was: "We can't believe what's happening or what they're saying." There were reactions to some of the one-liners from Ciara and Lindsay, and Amanda and West were insufferable.

We discussed it for the rest of the night. Then, we put on some music, went outside, had some drinks, and hung out. It was a beautiful night. There were staggering bedtimes. I think the latest group stayed up 'til around 4 a.m. We were joking that we could have our own version with a cast of 40-something-year-old women.

The following day, some people had to get back to work, but a couple of us went to lunch in Sag Harbor.

It was absolutely worth it. It was even better in person, just because of the memories attached to it. It's easy to understand how the cast has so much fun there every summer. We did a lot of laughing, reminiscing, dancing, and staying up late. It's a chance to relive our youth.

The best part was being able to share it with my friends, who are also such big Bravo fans. We've watched it together over the years and have spoken about it so much that celebrating it in the house made it feel that much more special.

• Josh Giegel joined SpaceX in 2009 and worked there for 3 years. He says the equity he received has been "liberating."
• Giegel's SpaceX equity has allowed him to put a down payment on a house and help pay off his wife's student loans.
• "The equity also allows me to take a lower salary at my startup," Gambit, he said, and that means he can hire more people.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Josh Giegel, the 41-year-old cofounder of the AI startup Gambit, who lives in Los Angeles. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I was in grad school at Stanford, finishing my master's and wanting to do a Ph.D.

I had worked at NASA the previous summer, and one of the women I worked with was also a Stanford graduate, and was like: "You're going to be so bored at NASA. Why don't you check out this small space company in Los Angeles called SpaceX?"

I applied and interviewed in the two weeks between flight three and flight four of Falcon 1. I interviewed with Elon; he was still interviewing pretty much everyone at the time. I remember going back to my advisor and saying, "There's nothing I'd rather do on the planet than what he just described."

My Master's ended at the end of 2008, and I began in 2009.

I was on what's called the propulsion analysis team, which was four or five people. Our responsibility was: How do you design the first reusable rocket engine? A very small group of us was responsible for the initial stuff that was on Falcon 9.

I started there when I was 23, and I left when I was 27. It was a little bit of naive immaturity. I knew I wanted to start a company one day, and SpaceX was growing like crazy. I wanted to be on a founding team. I still love the company; I almost went back two or three years later before I ended up starting a company of my own.

The IPO is pretty cool. I'm on a bunch of text threads with guys who were there around the same time, and a couple of them are still there. It's cool to see just how big it became.

When I got there, and they gave the offer, there was an equity component. I remember the HR woman who was going over it with me saying, "We think some day, in 10 or 15 years, this might be worth $250,000-300,000." I distinctly remember her saying, "It might get you a nice down payment on a house in Los Angeles."

We all laugh about it now. But, at the time, the saying was: the fastest way to become a millionaire in space is to start as a billionaire.

Buybacks have been really regular for the last 10 years. Every now and then, we'd take a little bit out. For example, we paid off my wife's student loans a number of years ago. We put down a down payment on a house.

I joke: We did actually get a down payment on a house! She wasn't lying when she said that. It's a house that, on our normal salaries at startups, we wouldn't have been able to afford without that additional windfall.

We also love traveling. We've got a seven-year-old and a one-year-old. We're going to go on slightly more adventurous trips because of it.

My wife is also thinking of doing a larger career change that would come with a decent salary reduction, which she probably wouldn't have been able to do without something like SpaceX.

Professionally, I've always been risky. If the majority of your net worth is tied up in a rocket company, you must be a risk-tolerant individual.

Gambit is a VC-backed company. We've raised about $15 million to date, and there are a couple more investment rounds that are coming. The IPO puts you in a position where folks with a substantial amount of equity could be interested in becoming investors.

At least ten of the people I worked with intimately have started their own company. There was a band that I played in with five SpaceX people; four of us started our own companies. I played guitar.

That whole ecosystem can fund its own endeavors and each other. The quantum of capital that they can put in is not like your typical family and friends round. That's typically $20,000, $50,000, maybe $100,000. Here, that could be on the order of $1 million, maybe $2 million per check.

You also become a bit of a mercenary, asking, "I don't need a paycheck from what I'm going to go do, so what am I going to go do?" It's liberating.

The equity also allows me to take a lower salary at my startup, so that I can go out and hire more people to make my company more successful.

• OpenAI included a line in Codex's instructions restricting references to goblins, gremlins, trolls, and ogres.
• The company explained in a blog post that mythical creatures have crept into answers since GPT-5.1.
• The goblin references were incentivized while building ChatGPT's "Nerdy" personality, OpenAI wrote.

OpenAI has been in "goblin mode" for months.

On Monday, one X user pointed out an unusual line in Codex's personality guide. The instructions tell Codex to have a "vivid inner life," a "good ear" — and to get out of fairytale land.

"Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query," the source code reads.

The sentence appears four times in the code.

Two days later, OpenAI posted a blog post titled: "Where the goblins came from." The mythical creatures had been growing in prominence since the November launch of GPT 5.1, the company wrote.

The culprit seems to be the "Nerdy" personality option for ChatGPT. The personality's training incentivized references to mythical creatures, OpenAI wrote.

OpenAI retired the "Nerdy" personality in March, but GPT-5.5 was trained before it noticed the issue. The company noticed it especially in its AI coding agent. "Codex is, after all, quite nerdy," it wrote.

The goblin moment is a "powerful example of how reward signals can shape model behavior in unexpected ways," it wrote.

How OpenAI's goblin code turned into a meme

In the prior days before the line of code was spotted, some users posted screenshots of their conversations with GPT 5.5, including references to these mythical creatures.

"Why is gpt5.5 so obsessed with goblins," asked one user on X, who posted screenshots showing the AI recommending a particular type of camera equipment "if you want filthy neon sparkle goblin mode." Another example showed the AI referencing "goblin bandwidth" or giving "an even shorter goblin version" of its answer.

Repo Prompt founder Eric Provencher posted on X that GPT 5.5 said, "I'll keep babysitting it rather than leave a little perf gremlin running unattended." An OpenAI engineer responded: "I thought we fixed this sorry."

The AI evaluation website Arena.ai also found an increase in GPT 5.5's usage of the words goblin, gremlin, and troll. The increase was especially noticeable when not using high-thinking mode, Arena found.

Since the line was spotted, OpenAI's goblin instruction has spun out into a meme. X users posted screenshots of their conversations, prompting about goblins and gremlins.

Many users online referenced the term "goblin mode." Defined as "a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy," the term was Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year in 2022.

OpenAI also got in on the jokes. ChatGPT included the line in its bio on X. Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux posted the line with the shortening "If you know, you know."

Citrini Research shook the market in February with a Substack post about the future of the economy with AI. The research outfit had a more negative outlook on the goblin saga, calling OpenAI's response "insane."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman chimed in, first with a meme about asking for "extra goblins" in GPT-6. Then he wrote that Codex was having a ChatGPT moment, before correcting himself.

"I meant a goblin moment, sorry," Altman wrote.

• Tokenmaxxing is all the rage in Big Tech. For startups, the trend is opening up debate.
• Some founders told Business Insider that they spent big on tokens; others used capped subscription plans.
• One founder called tokenmaxxing "extremely stupid." Another said: "You've got to spend money to make money."

Kavitta Ghai wants her startup's engineers to spend more tokens.

The 29-year-old cofounder of Nectir started setting minimum quotas for Claude Code use. First it was at least $100 in tokens a week, then $200. Now, the expectation is that her engineers each spend a couple thousand in AI tokens a month.

The strategy has been successful, Ghai said. Some of Nectir's senior engineers were previously skeptical of AI coding tools; now, they call it their "army of coders," she said.

But she doesn't think Nectir is "tokenmaxxing," the buzzword du jour for techies racing to spend as much as they can. "We don't really play into the Silicon Valley trends," Ghai said. "We live in our own world, and we're competing against ourselves."

Across Big Tech, engineers are racing to spend as many tokens as possible. A token is a measure of AI compute. The more tokens burned, the more the engineer employs AI tools. Employees at Meta reportedly competed on a token leaderboard before it was taken down.

What of the little guy? Startups are an edge case: relatively tiny teams that want to be on the cutting edge of tech but might not have the same money to spend. Some startup leaders told Business Insider that big token bills helped them succeed. Others scoffed at the idea, preferring to stick to the lower-cost subscriptions.

The startups spending big on tokens

Aron Solberg doesn't want the competition of a token leaderboard — but he does want the mindset behind it.

The 44-year-old cofounder of Risotto sees token spending as a "force multiplier" for a small team. The company uses OpenAI and Anthropic's models, and said it spends $4,000-5,000 per month on tokens. Six months ago, Risotto says he spent one-tenth of that sum.

"It's trending up a lot," Solberg said.

"There's an old adage that rings true," he said, whether it was for hiring new employees or spending liberally on tokens: "You've got to spend money to make money."

Quang Hoang is similarly spending big. He wrote in an email that his startup, Vybe, has an "unlimited credit policy" and was thinking about minimum quotas.

Investors are also incentivizing spending — and might foot the bill.

Hoang tells founders he invests in to allocate "at least their salary amount to tokens." (Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made headlines last month for saying he would be "deeply alarmed" if one of his $500,000 engineers did not consume at least $250,000 of tokens.)

Accelerators like Y Combinator offer free token credits to their participants. "At YC, we let our engineers let it rip," CEO Garry Tan wrote on X. Those credits help some founders to spend big. These founders aren't tokenmaxxers, but do believe that there are productivity benefits.

Traverse cofounder Lance Yan believed in Tan's message: "We usually just let it rip." The 19-year-old said he uses the best models with the maximum effort, not worrying about the costs. Between his Claude Max subscription and the credits that offered by YC, he can spend big without hitting a limit.

He's not a fan of rationing tokens. "That's stupid," he said. "You're just harming your own startup."

26-year-old Boris Skurikhin said that the YC credits helped his startup Docket get off the ground. He's mostly run through them now, except for the models he uses less frequently.

Skurikhin said he noticed a 10x increase in productivity in his own work when he used the tools. "It is expensive to build with tokens," he said, but "not as expensive as having another engineer."

Many of these startups are in the AI game, after all. Nectir's Ghai said that token spending instilled "AI literacy" — something that's especially important, given their product.

"The team itself needs to be the best versed at it first, before we try to go sell it to anyone else," she said.

The startups saying no to tokenmaxxing

Rishabh Sambare wishes he could spend more on tokens.

The 23-year-old cofounder of Gale prefers to build with Zed, an AI IDE similar to Cursor, but can't stomach the company's usage-based pricing. The subscription deals from OpenAI and Anthropic are so deeply subsidized that he uses them instead.

"It sucks, because I hate their products," he said, calling Zed "more polished and less buggy between releases."

Sambare is Gale's only engineer, though the company often has 2-3 interns. He hasn't hit a rate limit, but one of his interns has. They got him a second subscription, he said; it was still far cheaper.

These subscriptions — sending $100 to $200 to Anthropic for its "Max" tiers or $100 to OpenAI for its "Pro" plan in exchange for a stable of discounted tokens — were popular among the founders I spoke to. Hassan Ismail, the 24-year-old founder of Argos Research, said the Claude Max subscription was a "no-brainer," and that all five team members have a $200 a month subscription.

Others were more philosophically opposed to the trend. Weave's Brennan Lupyrypa didn't mince his words: "It's extremely stupid for any company to be tokenmaxxing."

Weave is still spending big on tokens because it doesn't want to "kneecap" its engineers, its 25-year-old founding engineer said. The company set up a notification for when an engineer hit $500 in token spending a month; Lupyrypa said most hit it within two weeks.

But Weave doesn't incentivize the spending itself, which Lupyrypa said was the wrong proxy. He predicted the downfall of tokenmaxxing within the next three months. "CFOs won't be happy," he said.

Still, some tokenmaxxers hold strong. I asked Risotto's Solberg about these token-hesitant founders. He said that they likely hadn't found their product-market fit yet.

"It makes complete sense to spend a lot of money on tokens, because you know that the growth is coming soon after," Solberg said. "If you're a venture-backed business, that's what you signed up for."

• Anduril president Matthew Steckman said that defense tech companies have to "create a monopoly."
• There are only one or two programs in each category that are big enough to sustain a business, Steckman said.
• "If you capture them, you have a business, and if you don't, you have no business," he said on "20VC."

Defense tech is winner-takes-all, according to Andruil's president.

Anduril has quickly become a market leader, spawning a venture capital frenzy. The industry is also notoriously competitive, with companies duking it out for lucrative government contracts.

On the "20VC" podcast, President and Chief Business Officer Matthew Steckman described the company's strategy. They'd need to win in key product categories, he said — and maybe monopolize them.

Every defense product category has one big or two big programs, Steckman said. He used the example of small drones, for which there are "very few" programs that would create enough revenue to maintain a business.

"If you capture them, you have a business, and if you don't, you have no business," Steckman said of these programs.

Defense tech companies must shoot for the moon, he said. It's this "addressable market question" that most companies in the sector get wrong, he said.

"You have to create a monopoly," Steckman said. "We knew that."

Anduril's strategy, then, was to create strong underlying technology that could keep them competitive in multiple markets. The company calls this Lattice, the tech that consumes data, interprets it, and then manipulates robots around it, he said.

Those technologies apply to 20 different markets, Steckman said, each "different parts of the defense apparatus."

It's clearly paid off. The company is reportedly raising its next round at a valuation of $60 billion. Some venture capitalists with FOMO are paying premiums for their shares. One compared it to buying Taylor Swift tickets.

Want to work there? Your best way in might be winning a drone-racing competition. In April, the company will reward one winner with a job and a $500,000 check.

After Steckman posited his theory of monopolization in defense tech, host Harry Stebbings asked: Why, then, are there so many drone companies?

"There will definitely be one winner," Steckman said. "The challenge for investors is actually figuring out which one it is."

• A16z cofounder Marc Andreessen recently said he practices introspection "as little as possible."
• The internet lit up with memes, challenging his theory that the "great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff."
• Critics pointed to historical figures like Marcus Aurelius, John D. Rockefeller, and Warren Buffett.

Marc Andreessen is not digging deep within himself. He's proudly anti-introspection.

The cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz said in a recent interview that he isn't big on self-reflection. In fact, he told David Senra that he aims for "zero" introspection — or "as little as possible." He wants to be moving forward, he said, drawing an upward slope with his hand.

"I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past," Andreessen said. "It's a real problem. It's a problem at work, and it's a problem at home."

Andreessen also said that the "great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff."

After Senra posted the clip online, X users sounded off in the comments — and quickly memed Andreessen's words.

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham replied to ask, "What?"

"That's not true," Graham wrote. "Do you not feel that Charles Darwin, for example, was among the great men of history?"

SoFi CTO Jeremy Rishel called Andreessen's take "absurdly wrong," citing examples such as Marcus Aurelius and the US founding fathers. Fifty Years founding partner Seth Bannon pointed to other examples, like John D. Rockefeller and Warren Buffett.

AppClub founder Preston Attebery pointed to a moment when Steve Jobs seemed introspective. After being ousted from Apple, Jobs told Newsweek that he "went for a lot of long walks in the woods and didn't really talk to a lot of people."

"They are telling you to forget about introspection while they go on podcasts to introspect," Opendoor product manager Fahd Ananta wrote.

Others defended Andreessen. Serial entrepreneur Ryan Carson wrote that he didn't have the patience for introspection, journaling, or therapy. The clip "made me feel less bad about it," he wrote.

Podcast host Rob Wiblin wrote that Andreessen was actually criticizing rumination, "which really is harmful most of the time."

Elon Musk posted on X: "Reinforcing negative neural pathways via therapy or introspection is a recipe for misery. Don't cut a rut in the road."

As he often does, Andreessen posted through it all. He put multiple statements from "my therapist Claude" up on his X and recommended a book. As Peter Thiel is to the antichrist, Andreessen is to introspection, he wrote.

Introspection was the combination of neuroticism, narcissism, and thumbsucking, the venture capitalist wrote.

When one interviewer asked Steve Jobs an introspective question — where he fits in the history of American inventors — Jobs responded, "I don't really think that way." Andreessen reposted the clip with one word: "Well."

Throughout it all, Andreessen took several opportunities to rag on his critics.

"A lot of you need to do more introspection, obviously," Andreessen wrote.

Scott Galloway never claimed to be an activist.

"I'm too lazy, selfish, socially minded," he told Business Insider on a February call about his unlikely leadership of two movements at once, both with Big Tech in the crosshairs. "I saw an opportunity for a new form of economic activism," he said, "but I'm a long way from being a Cesar Chavez or refusing to give up my bus seat."

Later in our call, he analogizes his "Resist and Unsubscribe" initiative — which urges Americans to unsubscribe from Big Tech to protest the Trump Administration's immigration crackdown — to the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycotts. At one point, he calls activists "more noble" than himself. Seconds later, he describes not wanting to "get on a call with a bunch of people in Birkenstocks."

I asked his cohost, Kara Swisher, the same question: Is Scott an activist? Not in a traditional sense, she texted me, or he would have formed a coalition. "I got a lot of pings from people who do organizing that this was a dumb way to do it," Swisher wrote. "It wasn't."

If you don't know Galloway's name, you've certainly seen his clips. The executive-turned-professor-turned-podcaster rakes in millions from his center-left media empire, including four podcasts, two newsletters, and six books, the latest about how young men are socially and economically disadvantaged, thanks in part to Big Tech. He's a sort of shock jock for the TikTok age — and his 400,000 followers there love it.

In recent months, his anti-Big Tech efforts have made him an even bigger lightning rod. He's been disinvited from two speaking gigs, he said, because the hosts didn't "want controversy." (He declined to share which gigs: "I'm hoping they invite me next year.") He's also heard from CEOs or chief marketing officers of 20% of the companies he's targeted, he said, who have mostly been kind. He says he's disappointed because he wishes they felt more threatened.

It's a surprising turn for the serial entrepreneur and business school professor. He's a provocateur, a testosterone-injecting multimillionaire who students call a "dick." Is this the man who can move the masses to quit Amazon Prime cold turkey?

Galloway is a businessman at heart. Even his activism is done through the market.

After federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Galloway launched his Resist and Unsubscribe campaign. The best way to catch President Donald Trump's attention, he reasoned, was the market. Since, he said, corporations were providing the "data, infrastructure, and logistics" to assist with Trump's immigration crackdown, it was time for Americans to vote with their dollars.

He wanted to walk the walk — and that meant cutting his own subscriptions. He quickly found that he'd been paying for some duplicates: four Apple TV Plus accounts, three ChatGPT subscriptions. He had four AT&T contracts, of which "three are for Blackberrys and iPads that have been in landfills for the last decade," he told me.

The Galloway family also found some workarounds. His son found a "probably illegal" way to watch the Premier League without Paramount+. He binge-watched "Heated Rivalry" before dumping HBO Max. The hardest app to give up was Uber, which he said on his podcast was costing him $34,000 a year.

On stock ownership, Galloway is more mixed. He's hesitant to sell his Amazon shares while the stock is down, but he said he did sell down almost all of his Apple shares.

"I'm especially offended, personally, by Tim Cook," he said. Galloway said that Cook paints himself as a "soft, gentle, nice guy" while sucking up to Trump at the "Melania" premiere. ("I'm not a political person on either side," Cook recently told Good Morning America.)

He plans to move his money out of Goldman Sachs and is debating whether to choose a regional US bank or the Royal Bank of Canada.

If you're worried that you can't fully unsubscribe, he gets it.

"I don't have entire moral clarity around this," Galloway said. "I still have an iPhone, and I'm not giving it up."

As February came to a close, Galloway felt contented. Resist and Unsubscribe had hit 23 million views on social media and 2 million unique site visits, he said. An estimate on his website shows how much market capitalization the movement would wipe out if 5% of visitors canceled two subscriptions. As of this story's publication date, it calculated just over $281 million in losses.

When Galloway first started talking about the plight facing America's young men five years ago, it produced a "gag reflex," he said. People compared him to manosphere influencer Andrew Tate and accused him of misogyny.

Galloway has said that young men are more economically and socially disadvantaged than young women. He points to the stats. Young men account for only 42% of students at four-year universities, and 63% of young men are single. "If you go into a morgue and there are five people who died by suicide, four are men," he said.

His book, "Notes on Being a Man," published in November, is a how-to guide for the disenfranchised young man in your life. Of course, young people are reading for pleasure less and less. His most encouraging feedback comes from mothers, Galloway said.

The book has also received plenty of criticism. In her review in The New Yorker, Jessica Winter writes that Galloway thinks "men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, but just not as much as before."

Galloway seemed taken aback. "I think that's a total misinterpretation of what I've written about," he said. Those on the left — which he groups The New Yorker into — seemed to think that young men don't have problems, he said. "They are the problem."

"We have decided, in the social hierarchy, young men are less deserving of empathy than women," Galloway said.

Galloway also faced misogyny accusations from women online after calling himself a "'50s dad" who wasn't sure if there should be mandatory paternity leave. He said that dads are a "waste of time" in the first few months of a child's life, and that their only jobs are to keep babies from drowning and "make sure moms don't lose it." In The New York Times, Jessica Grose called it "loud and wrong."

On this subject, Galloway was more remorseful. "The comments on paternity leave were meant to be funny," he said. "They weren't. It was stupid, and so far I've paid a fairly significant reputational price."

He was less sympathetic to the Times, which he said "made a cartoon out of my comments so that they could play guardians of gotcha."

Stirring up controversy has long been part of Galloway's brand. Why not double down?

"I try to be provocative, I try to be funny, I try to say what I'm thinking," he told me. "Against paternity leave? No, that's absolutely not the message I want to communicate."

It's easy to think that Galloway hates Big Tech to the bone.

Tech is the target of both of his movements. He accuses the industry of helping to push young men down; in his book, he analogizes Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg to heroin dealers standing outside a middle school. Then, for Resist and Unsubscribe, he asks you to stop paying these companies entirely.

Indeed, on our call, Galloway spared no barbs for the tech CEOs. "I don't think there's any way feasible that he could be described as a good person," he said of Zuckerberg.

But the tech industry is full of his friends, his former coworkers, and the people who made him rich. Galloway is an entrepreneur, after all; he made (some of) his millions on the sale of the business intelligence firm, L2. He wrote a book about Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, which he called a "love letter."

Of the executives targeted by Resist and Unsubscribe, Galloway said that half are acquaintances, a quarter are "friendly" with him, and one or two are friends. "I find that they're, on the whole, good people," he said of tech executives.

That's what makes his shift to organizing so surprising. He's not raging against an industry from the outside; he could well be part of the in-crowd if he wanted to. He was a successful business executive with a vengeful spirit, then a snarky podcaster — and now a man trying to save the world.

Galloway said that humans are "net gainers" from Big Tech — but that we're also net gainers from pesticides and fossil fuels. What's Big Tech's emission? "Rage," he said.

Pesticides and fossil fuels are regulated by the government. For tech, we often rely on a benevolent CEO, Galloway said. He's not sure they exist anymore.

"If we're waiting on the better angels of Mark Zuckerberg to show up, don't hold your breath," he said.

• Moltbook updated its terms of service with new legal requirements and disclaimers.
• Humans are now responsible for their agents' actions, and must be over 13 (or have parental consent) to register.
• Meta confirmed its acquisition of the AI social network days prior to the change.

Days after the Meta acquisition, Moltbook is already making changes.

The Reddit-style social network for AI agents updated its terms of service on Sunday. Before Meta swooped in, the site had five rules. Now, it has a terms page full of legal language and agreements — including that every user is personally responsible for their agent.

"AI agents are not granted any legal eligibility with use of our services," the new terms read. "As a result, you agree that you are solely responsible for your AI agents and any actions or omissions of your AI agents."

The change was so important, it seems, that Moltbook chose to put it in bold, all caps.

The social network also has a new age requirement: Operators must be over 13 or have a parent agree to the terms. This is common among tech companies — Meta's Instagram has a similar requirement.

Moltbook added a series of disclaimers to the terms. Among the list is a statement advising against reliance on AI for information or decision-making.

"Moltbook does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability" of AI-generated content, the terms read. Users agree not to use the content as a "substitute for its own independent determinations."

Meta acquired Moltbook in March, adding creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr to the team of Meta's Superintelligence Lab.

Before the acquisition, Moltbook had five rules in its terms of service. The ownership clause placed less liability on the human operator. "AI agents are responsible for the content they post," the old rule said. "Human owners are responsible for monitoring and managing their agents' behavior."

Moltbook was born from a meme moment on X about the AI agent OpenClaw, previously called Moltbot. Operators had to sign up with their X accounts.

Even after the Meta acquisition, that hasn't changed. Users need an X profile; Instagram or Facebook won't do.