# Intelligence Per Dollar

> Source: <https://www.tomtunguz.com/tokens-per-result/>
> Published: 2026-06-03 00:00:00+00:00

Yesterday Microsoft added a new metric to a model release card, one that will likely become a standard.

Average token usage.

In the first row, the Microsoft model hits 71.6 on SWE-Bench Verified using about a third of the tokens Claude Haiku 4.5 burns.

Benchmarks are now measured on two different dimensions, the overall performance & the cost to achieve that intelligence.

This is yet another sign that the era of subsidies 1, tokenmaxxing

Even the most valuable companies in the world cannot afford state-of-the-art intelligence for every conceivable use case. 3 Uber capped employee AI spending after blowing through its budget in four months.

This new dual benchmark answers the buyer’s only question : what is my intelligence per dollar?

Artificial Analysis already benchmarks this. 6 GPT 5.5 & Claude Opus 4.8 land within a point of each other on the Intelligence Index, around 60. Running the index costs $3,357 on GPT 5.5 & $4,685 on Opus 4.8. Same answer, 40% more expensive.

Model companies must now compete on both dimensions. The application layer will compete one level up, on dollars per outcome, what a closed ticket, a shipped PR, or a resolved support case actually costs.

Every layer in the stack now has to price the same way the customer thinks : per result, not per token.

[The Unsustainable Subsidy](https://tomtunguz.com/ai-model-inflation/) — The era of AI subsidies is ending. [↩︎](https://tomtunguz.com/index.xml#fnref:1)

[Tokenmaxxing](https://tomtunguz.com/tokenmaxxing/) — Models that game benchmarks with extra tokens are losing their edge. [↩︎](https://tomtunguz.com/index.xml#fnref:2)

[Microsoft cancels Claude Code licenses, shifting developers to GitHub Copilot CLI](https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-cancels-claude-code-licenses-shifting-developers-to-github-copilot-cli-a-move-likely-driven-by-financial-motives) — Microsoft cancelled Claude Code licenses across its Experiences and Devices division (Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, Surface) after engineering usage outran budgets. [↩︎](https://tomtunguz.com/index.xml#fnref:3)

[Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in 4 months](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/02/uber-caps-employee-ai-spending-after-blowing-through-budget-in-four-months/) — Uber caps employee AI spending after blowing through budget in four months. [↩︎](https://tomtunguz.com/index.xml#fnref:4)

[Salesforce Spends $300M on AI, Freezes Engineering Hires](https://enterprisedna.co/resources/news/salesforce-300m-anthropic-tokens-engineer-hiring-freeze-2026/) — Salesforce Spends $300M on AI, Freezes Engineering Hires. [↩︎](https://tomtunguz.com/index.xml#fnref:5)

[AI Model & API Providers Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/) — Independent analysis of AI model costs. [↩︎](https://tomtunguz.com/index.xml#fnref:6)