The Pulse: ‘Tokenmaxxing’ as a weird new trend
… which will probably be the shortest-lived trend because it’s so wasteful. Also: coding AI agent subsidies could be ending, Cal.com going closed source and blaming it on AI, and more.
The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Hit reply and share it with me.
Today, we cover:
Tokenmaxxing: weird new trend. At Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and other large companies, devs are purposefully burning tokens (and money!) to inflate their AI usage and hit AI usage metrics which they treat as targets.
Are coding AI-agent subsidies doomed? At the same time as Anthropic stopped subsidizing enterprise plans, Uber managed to burn through its entire 2026 AI token budget in just 3 months. I expect per-engineer AI budgets to be rolled out across more companies soon.
Industry Pulse. The myth of Claude Mythos, Claude’s degradation, Cal.com going open source due to AI threat, Vercel open sources its “agent factories” tool, sensible AI usage guidelines in the Linux kernel, and more.
Cal.com goes closed source – but is it really because of AI? The open source Calendly alternative moved a good part of its code to a closed repo, citing AI and security concerns. But perhaps this was just a business model change that would have happened, AI or not.