There’s a new buzzword making the rounds, and it hits close to home: Tokenmaxxing.
It describes the era we’re just leaving behind. Companies actively encouraged developers to use as much AI as possible. No spending limits, no measurement, no questions asked. Just burn through tokens and figure out the value later. That was the playbook for months.
Now comes the reckoning.
The crackdown begins
Uber is one of the first major companies to act. They’re introducing spending tiers for AI tools, starting at $1,500 per month per employee. Not because AI doesn’t work. Because nobody could tell whether the spending was worth it.
Even more telling: Flo Crivello, CEO of the startup Lindy, switched from Claude to DeepSeek. The result? Costs crashed. And quality? Apparently good enough for his use case.
The price question becomes an IPO question
The timing here isn’t accidental. Both OpenAI and Anthropic filed confidentially for IPOs in early June. And investors are paying very close attention.
Anthropic reported a $47 billion annualized run rate in May — a massive jump from roughly $10 billion in revenue for 2025. OpenAI is growing at a similar pace. But the question IPO candidates need to answer isn’t ‘How much revenue do you have?’ — it’s ‘Is that revenue sustainable?’
And that’s where things get uncomfortable.
Claude costs nearly 9x more than the cheapest alternative
The numbers are hard to argue with. Per unit, Claude costs $4,811, ChatGPT $3,357, and DeepSeek just $1,071. That makes Claude nearly nine times more expensive than the cheapest Chinese competitor.
When companies spend freely, nobody notices. But when CFOs start reading invoices — and that’s exactly what’s happening right now — the price gap becomes a real problem.
My take
The tokenmaxxing phase was inevitable. Every new technology goes through this: first you try everything, then you clean up. That’s healthy.
For Anthropic, this means two things. First, quality has to justify the premium. Claude is more expensive, but for many tasks it’s also significantly better than the alternatives. Anthropic needs to keep that edge. Second, the IPO narrative needs to hold up. A $47 billion run rate sounds impressive. But if a meaningful chunk of it comes from uncontrolled tokenmaxxing, that will raise questions on the public market.
The industry is growing up. That’s a good thing. But for premium providers, the road ahead just got bumpier.
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