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What Is Tokenmaxxing? Inside the New Productivity Hack That CEOs Adore and CFOs Fear

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11.04.2026

What Is Tokenmaxxing? Inside the New Productivity Hack That CEOs Adore and CFOs Fear

Engineers are racing to burn through as many AI tokens as possible to prove their productivity. 

BY BEN SHERRY, STAFF REPORTER @BENLUCASSHERRY

Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Adobe Stock

Engineers at tech companies are increasingly competing to prove their productivity, and some are turning to a relatively new metric: AI tokens. But while CEOs might be encouraging teams to use AI as much as possible, finance teams are struggling to understand this massive new spending pattern. 

For the uninitiated, tokens are essentially the units of data that AI models process as inputs and generate as outputs. AI models can generate thousands of tokens within minutes, especially when working on........

© Inc.com