Companies are scrambling to stop employees from maxing out AI budgets with small tasks

In Brief

1:09 PM PDT · June 24, 2026

The era of tokenmaxxing is over. After the AI industry encouraged companies to max out their AI budgets earlier this year, and some companies even built employee leaderboards to encourage internal AI usage — they are now realizing just how easy it is to spend huge sums of money on AI and get little in return.

We now appear to be entering the era of token rationing.

Recent news has been rife with stories about AI cutbacks and now 404 Media reports that consulting firm Accenture has been attempting to stop its employees from depleting its token reserves by using AI to do basic tasks — like converting PDFs into presentation slides.

The cutbacks take place not long after Accenture threatened that employees would “risk losing out on promotions” if they didn’t use AI, 404 writes.

404’s reporting is based on...

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