Consulting giant Accenture is trying to figure out how to stop non-technical workers from blowing through companies\u2019 AI token budget on trivial tasks like converting PDFs to presentation slides, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media. Across the industry Accenture is seeing \u201csoaring token spend,\u201d according to the audio.The news highlights a major shift in the tech industry and other companies that use AI: the wave of uninhibited AI growth is over. Some AI providers like GitHub are now charging customers per token rather than a flat subscription fee, leading some companies to burn through their tokens. Uber recently capped employees\u2019 use of AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor; that came after Uber told employees to use AI as much as possible and Uber\u2019s CTO said the company had blown its entire AI budget in four months. And Accenture itself reportedly started requiring senior staff to start using AI or risk losing out on promotions.\u00a0It also undercuts the narrative that superpowered engineers generating mountains of code are behind the AI boom. In many cases it is non-technical staff burning through tokens for non-specialized tasks.\ud83d\udca1Do you know anything else about token spend inside tech companies? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.\u201cWe\u2019re seeing from some of the data internally at least that it\u2019s actually not our engineers that are driving the token consumption. It\u2019s a lot of the non-engineers that are doing some of those behaviors […] you were talking about,\u201d Justice Kwak, Accenture\u2019s agentic AI strategy lead, said in a recent internal meeting, according to the audio obtained by 404 Media.At one point in the meeting, Kwak and Eduardo Salamanca de Diego, senior manager of product management at the company\u2019s Center for Advanced AI, start presenting about what is described as \u201ctoken ops.\u201dKwak says he knows people aren\u2019t using slides these days, but he has some. As he appears to be preparing to present, Stuart Henderson, Accenture\u2019s client group lead, interrupts. He jokes he hopes Kwak didn\u2019t just convert a PDF into images and then into markdown files. \u201cI\u2019m learning that\u2019s one of the big token chewers,\u201d Henderson says. \u201cTurning PDFs into markdown: is that right?\u201dThat\u2019s when Kwak says that\u2019s what Accenture\u2019s own data shows.\u00a0\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing right now is just rapid escalation in AI token spend,\u201d he says \u201cAs companies start to scale AI, moving from like simple chatbots into use cases that feature agentic workflows and automation and then enterprise-wide deployment of some of these tools like Copilot, Claude Code, and Codex, we\u2019re hitting this inflection point where AI is becoming material to the cost structure; spend is becoming very unpredictable; and leadership, especially at the CFO, COO, and CIO level, are still asking the question of whether they\u2019re getting value from what we\u2019re spending on in the context of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really not a niche problem. It is a problem that every enterprise will face if they are bullish on AI, if they haven\u2019t already,\u201d he adds. The amount of token spending is increasing \u201cexponentially, as more and more people are starting to use AI.\u201dKwak says after Accenture tried to get enterprises to adopt AI as quickly as possible, AI has reached scale in most areas in both Accenture and its clients. But with that scale is a new opportunity for Accenture regarding its clients: \u201cto really think about token economics.\u201d The bill of the overall AI spend is visible, Kwok explains, but attributing that AI spend at the token level to the value outcomes on the projects where AI is being used is not visible.\u00a0Finally, the \u201ccontrols are just arriving too late.\u201d Those are things that might stop someone spending a bunch of money on tokens, like budgeting or different tiers.Following the Financial Times\u2019 reporting of Accenture\u2019s policy to force AI adoption or risk missing promotions, an Accenture spokesperson told CNBC, \u201cOur strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work. That requires the adoption of the latest tools and technologies to serve our clients most effectively.\u201dKwak says Accenture plans to formally launch a product called \u201cToken IQ\u201d soon. Accenture did not respond to a request for comment.As 404 Media has reported, some startups have bragged about how much they\u2019ve spent on AI instead of human workers. Walmart also capped its staff\u2019s use of AI tools following high demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"