In accordance with column In accordance with Kevin Roos of the New York Instances, workers at firms like Meta and OpenAI are competing on “inside leaderboards exhibiting the variety of tokens they’ve.”[…]Every employee consumes it. ” At Meta (and Shopify specifically), AI utilization has turn into a metric that folks charge, with managers “rewarding workers who use AI instruments often and disciplining those that do not,” Roos mentioned.
The analogy right here is tough. It is tempting to say it is like having painters compete to see how a lot paint they use, however even when the paint is simply splattered as rapidly as potential, not less than it’s going to be seen when the mission is full. That is like telling troopers to measure their success on the battlefield by the variety of bullets fired, however suppressive fireplace, which does not hit something, performs an necessary function in battle technique. The very best analogy I can consider is that this. It is like NBA mascots being judged by the variety of T-shirts they fireplace off T-shirt cannons. The T-shirt is made by Hermès.
The ensuing numbers are completely staggering, each from a token and cash perspective. In accordance with Ruth, one OpenAI engineer burned by way of 210 billion tokens. That is the equal of 33 Wikipedias, based on Ruth. A Swedish software program engineer claims to Ruth that his firm is spending greater than his wage on his Claudecode tokens alone.
This “token maxing” pattern is clearly partly as a consequence of using “claws,” agent AI platforms comparable to OpenClaw, which is taken into account the largest AI innovation of the yr. OpenClaw’s virality is a part of a significant shift by AI lovers this yr from OpenAI’s GPT mannequin to Claude, after which OpenAI employed the creator of OpenClaw and seems to be seeking to preserve its place as an business chief.
However even when used with out an exterior claw platform, Claude Code is beginning to look increasingly more like OpenClaw lately, and final week rolled out a function that additional enhances vibe coding on the go by permitting customers to extra simply talk with Claude Code on their cellphones.
We have launched the Claude Code channel, which lets you management your Claude Code periods by way of your MCP of alternative, together with Telegram and Discord.
Use this to ship messages on to Claude Code out of your telephone. pic.twitter.com/sl3BP2BEzS
— Tariq (@trq212) March 19, 2026
The promotion additionally features a new image of LLM token debauchery: a small 4-bit sprite of a lobster, or maybe a crab (a crimson crustacean anyway).
Nonetheless, tokenmaxxing speaks to a broader subject through which these firms tout the sheer variety of tokens which are handled as indicators of success. A few week in the past, OpenAI President Greg Brockman boasted that the coding-oriented GPT-5.4 processes 5 trillion tokens per day. To be honest, this is smart as a strategy to please traders, since tokens have a price.
gpt-5.4 has grown sooner than some other mannequin ever launched on the API, processing 5T tokens per day inside every week of launch, processing extra quantity than all the API a yr in the past, and reaching an annual run charge of $1B in internet new income.
It is a good mannequin, so please strive it!
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) March 16, 2026
Nonetheless, we should admit that 5 trillion is a big quantity. Do you know that Donald McDonald’s Large Purple Shoe Automotive appeared within the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? Fits men’s size 266 feet What if there have been really ft in it? Aren’t large numbers cool?
