Source: Fortune.com
Summary
Cognition CEO Scott Wu argues that companies are focusing too much on AI spending and not enough on employee productivity. He suggests that companies should define clear returns on investment for AI, including revenue growth, efficiency gains, or cost-saving. Wu’s remarks come after reports of companies like Meta and Amazon creating internal incentives to measure token usage, which led to excessive use of AI and eventually scrapped. The trend of tokenmaxxing has also taken a financial toll on tech companies, such as Uber, which burned through its entire AI budget for 2026 in just four months.
Our Reading
The strategy enters a familiar phase.
Scott Wu, Cognition CEO, warns that tokenmaxxing has gone too far. Companies like Meta and Amazon created internal incentives to measure token usage, but it backfired. Uber burned through its entire AI budget for 2026 in just four months. The Boston Consulting Group notes that employees don’t know what to do with the time saved by new tools. The workplace productivity paradox is a human-created problem of leadership not communicating clear goals around AI.
The numbers tell one story, but the real question is: what are companies doing with the time saved by AI?
Author: Evan Null
