tokenmaxxing as – BNP Paribas CIB’s chief AI officer Charles Holive says his team tracks token consumption only to control costs, not to chase “vanity metrics” like maximizing AI token use. At Mistral AI’s summit in Paris, he argued that employees should be judged by what they
In Paris last week, while tech leaders gathered around the promise of faster, smarter AI tools, Charles Holive brought the conversation back to something more basic: results.
Holive. chief AI officer at BNP Paribas CIB—the investment banking arm of one of Europe’s largest banks—said his team does track token consumption. but he’s careful about what it means. Speaking at Mistral AI’s summit in Paris. he said his group is “measur[ing] something else entirely” and tries to avoid measuring progress by raw volume.
“We try to go away from vanity metrics — billions of tokens per day,” Holive told Business Insider.
Instead, he said his team starts with a different set of questions—ones that aim at outcomes rather than activity. “What did you do that you didn’t do before? How much faster did you do it?” he said.
That approach is built into how projects are governed inside the bank. Holive said the team doesn’t simply ask whether employees used AI. Rather. it sets explicit assumptions about how much revenue or productivity it expects. creates KPIs. and monitors progress monthly or quarterly against those goals.
Tokens still matter, but for a narrower reason. Holive said BNP Paribas CIB maintains dedicated teams that monitor token consumption because the bank needs control over costs. “Then we look at token consumption because I need to control my costs,” he said.
He framed the method as a direct rejection of the mindset behind “tokenmaxxing. ” a concept that has taken hold in Silicon Valley over the past year—where maximizing AI usage. and therefore token consumption. is treated as a proxy for productivity. Holive said companies sometimes pressure people toward volume instead of value. “We didn’t say, ‘use the tool, do your best,’” he said. “We did the opposite of that,” he added.
The pushback comes as some US companies are reassessing whether rising AI costs are translating into meaningful returns. Amazon recently shut down an internal AI-use leaderboard after employees reportedly began performing tasks simply to climb the rankings. Uber COO Andrew Macdonald has publicly questioned whether rising AI costs are translating into more useful products. GitHub, as AI bills continue to rise, moved Copilot to usage-based pricing.
Holive’s stance echoed comments from other executives at the same summit. Amit Kapur. chief AI and transformation officer at Tata Consultancy Services. told Business Insider that companies should focus on “business outcomes” and “business impacts” rather than “only token as one line item.” Antoine Pichot. director of innovation. digital. and data at La Banque Postale. said his bank evaluates AI projects based on factors such as efficiency gains. customer satisfaction. employee satisfaction. and financial impact.
Still, Holive didn’t dismiss tokens entirely. He said token usage can be useful as a measure of adoption, especially in software engineering. But he insisted the core of the measurement has to be the difference the tool makes—what changes in speed and performance.
The tension behind his comments is straightforward: token tracking can be a cost-management tool. but it can also quietly turn into a scoreboard that rewards effort rather than improvement. Holive’s answer inside BNP Paribas CIB is to keep the financial discipline while refusing to treat raw token counts as proof of progress.
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