As the cost of AI continues to skyrocket, Microsoft engineers are getting new limits on their AI use in the workplace.
According to a company email obtained by 404 Media, Microsoft is making the more affordable OpenAI GPT-5.6 its default model for internal use to “get greater value from our token investment.” Additionally, Microsoft divisions will soon have an “AI token budget target" that employees can individually track.
Tokens are like AI credits; the more words you use when prompting an AI, the more tokens you eat up. For a time, tech employees were encouraged to use AI as much as possible, but that activity, or tokenmaxxing, resulted in huge bills for the companies using it.
In the email seen by 404 Media, Microsoft EVP Jay Parikh said, "We all need to be aware of how we consume tokens. Tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for."
Instead, "I want all of us focused on maximizing outcomes that move the needle for our customers and our business," Parikh said. "As such, we are updating our internal guidance and managing token spend with the same discipline we apply to every other critical resource."
Parikh's email links to internal Copilot guidelines, which say Microsoft divisions will have an “AI token budget target," but that document doesn't get into specifics.
This comes about two months after GitHub Copilot moved to usage-based billing, and some users quickly hit their limits. Microsoft is reportedly also trying to cut down on AI costs by sending Microsoft 365 AI prompts to its internal MAI models rather than Anthropic and OpenAI.
Companies like Amazon, Adobe, Atlassian, and Citi have also cracked down on their employees’ token spending, 404 Media reported last month.