A fascinating new entry in the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal column looks at what one might think would be the aftermath of the tokenmaxxing craze, in which companies spend as much money as possible on AI compute—but the Journal finds at least a couple businesses still acting profligate in the extreme, preferring in this case to spend a ton—but on premium-priced frontier models only.
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. “The 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 ‘tokenmaxxing’ will be remembered as completely reckless,” he told the Journal.
However, Shopify in particular isn’t having it. Apparently engineers aren’t allowed to use anything that’s not a frontier model, meaning use something expensive like OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol or Anthropic’s Fable 5 or GTFO. Farhan Thawar, who heads engineering at that company tells the journal, “I typically am not as worried about token cost because I’m learning faster than I would have without the tokens.”
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—mostly on his own—a breathtaking 774 billion AI tokens. The estimated cost of those tokens is $4.5 million.
And, again, it’s frontier models only, Nguyen says. “If time to market and competitive risk is more important, and you’re willing to spend for it, there’s no way you’ll choose anything other than a frontier model,” he tells the Journal.
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.
