{"slug": "new-tokenomics-field-emerges-as-firms-struggle-to-measure-return-on-ai-spending", "title": "New 'Tokenomics' Field Emerges as Firms Struggle To Measure Return on AI Spending", "summary": "A new field called tokenomics has emerged as companies struggle to measure the return on their artificial intelligence spending, prompting the Linux Foundation to launch the Tokenomics Foundation on 4 August with 30 founding members to build shared benchmarks for comparing AI providers. Howard Rubin, an economist advising companies on technology spending, said firms lack accounting practices for AI budgets, while some companies like cybersecurity firm Elisity have created internal metrics such as 'bionic head count' to justify AI deployments.", "body_md": "# New 'Tokenomics' Field Emerges as Firms Struggle To Measure Return on AI Spending\n\n## Exploring the challenges and solutions in measuring AI investments and the role of the Tokenomics Foundation\n\nCompanies spent heavily on artificial intelligence over the past year, then found themselves struggling to answer a basic question: what did they actually get for the money. That gap has given rise to a new field within economics known as tokenomics, which studies how computing power sold in 'tokens' is bought, used and converted into business value. Many executives who encouraged widespread AI adoption are now watching finance teams try to work out where the spending actually went.\n\n## How To Price a Pixel and Tame the AI Costing Chaos\n\nHoward Rubin, an economist who advises companies on technology spending, said that firms are handling AI budgets with little grounding. 'It's a currency where you have no instinct to know what you're using, and the accounting practices aren't even there for it,' he said.\n\nRubin added that businesses are treating the expense as an investment, even though, in his words, 'it's a risky investment in case it has no return.' Ram Bala, a professor of AI and analytics at Santa Clara University, said the difficulty runs deeper than pricing. Some AI models, he explained, will keep attempting a task long after it has stopped making sense, burning through tokens without ever reaching a usable answer.\n\n## Linux Foundation Sets a Price Tag for AI\n\nThe Linux Foundation, the nonprofit that stewards major open-source cloud computing standards, first signalled its intent to tackle the problem in June, then formally launched the Tokenomics Foundation on 4 August, backed by 30 founding members. The initiative aims to build shared benchmarks so companies can compare AI providers the way they already compare cloud computing costs.\n\nJ.R. Storment, the Tokenomics Foundation's executive director, said the goal is to give organisations 'better starting places' for decisions they are already being forced to make without reliable data.\n\n## Bionic Head Count and Margins at Risk\n\nWith no industry standard yet in place, some companies are building internal measures from scratch. Cybersecurity firm Elisity created a metric it calls 'bionic head count', which divides total AI spending by average staff cost, then compares the combined output of human and AI 'workers' against revenue.\n\nStaff at Elisity even write job descriptions for individual AI agents to justify deploying them, and each new task the agent is given is formally evaluated afterwards. 'Essentially, you're adding virtual head count,' said Charlie Treadwell, the company's chief marketing officer. 'Is that resulting in incremental revenue which is all that really matters, or are you just eating at your margins?'\n\nJason Cumberland, co-founder of the spending tracker Revenium, said the clients coming to him are usually already in trouble. 'The people who come to us are experiencing spending explosions,' he said, adding that his firm helps map token spending against concrete outcomes such as the number of product features shipped.\n\nThe uncertainty has practical consequences beyond the finance department. Bain & Company analysts have modelled a scenario in which AI tokens eventually make up roughly a quarter of corporate operating expenses, which would force businesses to treat AI spending as part of the labour budget rather than a technology line item. Until standards from bodies like the Tokenomics Foundation are widely adopted, companies are effectively deciding how much to spend on AI without a reliable way to check whether it is paying off, a gap that economists say will only become more costly as usage grows.\n\n© Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-tokenomics-field-emerges-as-firms-struggle-to-measure-return-on-ai-spending", "canonical_source": "https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/navigating-ai-spending-tokenomics-industry-standards-1813912", "published_at": "2026-08-12 21:16:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-12 21:20:49.031045+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Linux Foundation", "Tokenomics Foundation", "Howard Rubin", "Ram Bala", "J.R. Storment", "Elisity", "Charlie Treadwell", "Revenium"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-tokenomics-field-emerges-as-firms-struggle-to-measure-return-on-ai-spending", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-tokenomics-field-emerges-as-firms-struggle-to-measure-return-on-ai-spending.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-tokenomics-field-emerges-as-firms-struggle-to-measure-return-on-ai-spending.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/new-tokenomics-field-emerges-as-firms-struggle-to-measure-return-on-ai-spending.jsonld"}}