Companies Start Tracking Their Workers’ AI Token Usage

IBL News | New York

Companies that regularly use AI have begun tracking their workers’ token use, a new unit of measurement. AI output has turbocharged productivity, changing the nature of work, and the number of tokens burned is the new hot metric.
Companies like ibl.ai, the parent house of the iblnews service, have launched a token counter.

Every prompt generates computing resources, measured in tokens. For example, generating 750 words takes about 1,000 tokens. It gets more complicated when writing code, creating video and audio, or enlisting agents to perform elaborate, days-long tasks.

Another example: Anthropic’s Claude Code to develop around 300,000 lines of code can cost $2,000 in tokens.

The more work done, the more tokens are used.

Token pricing has gone down, but costs can be higher for some newer sought-after models. Especially given the fact that most businesses are trying to get their employees to use AI.

Sometimes, companies opt for pay-as-you-go plans or buy enterprise plans with a set amount of use per worker.

“Companies need to start measuring token use,” said Brian Jabarian, a researcher with the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business who studies how new technologies reshape workplaces.

Some tech startups have even started monitoring token use on a per-engineer basis.

• Explaining Tokens — the Language and Currency of AI