Legora tech chief calls tokenmaxxing a ‘stupid’ move

tokenmaxxing incentives – Legora CTO Jacob Lauritzen said “tokenmaxxing” — pushing employees to burn AI tokens to look good on internal dashboards — is a “really stupid way” to encourage AI use. His remarks come as big tech shifts from tokenmaxxing-style incentives to tighter token cap

Jacob Lauritzen didn’t mince words when he described the way some companies have tried to motivate AI use.

On the “20VC” podcast episode released on Saturday. the chief technology officer of the legal AI startup Legora said he’s seen a pattern where employees are handed a leaderboard and later asked to justify their token usage in performance reviews. In his view, that setup doesn’t improve work so much as it reshapes behavior.

“A lot of people, say, get a leaderboard and bring up token usage at performance reviews,” Lauritzen said. “That leads to tokenmaxing, which is people just burn tokens just to look good.”

“That’s a really stupid way to do anything,” he added.

Tokenmaxxing is the practice of using lots of AI tools — including Claude, Codex, and Cursor — to boost productivity while also aiming to look strong on internal AI use dashboards and in reviews. But Lauritzen argued that the incentive structure is the real problem, not the technology.

He pointed to alternatives that reward results without encouraging waste. “more intelligent ways to use AI include hack days or demos where employees can show others what they’re building and the efficiency gains they have achieved. ” he said. He also called for recognition tied to effectiveness: “Reward them for being effective and efficient and having more output. not for necessarily using AI.”.

Still, Lauritzen acknowledged the pressure companies face when they’re trying to decide whether to let AI usage run wild. Fast-growing firms, he said, have “a lot to lose when they don’t use AI.”

“Is it worth us spending a ton of tokens to learn if it maybe gives us 20% efficiency for us? Yes, we have a really high opportunity cost,” Lauritzen said.

His comments land at what he described as a pivotal moment for the industry—one where companies are moving away from tokenmaxxing and toward tighter token controls. Some organizations. he said in effect through the examples that followed his remarks. are questioning whether dashboards built as motivation have backfired.

Finance teams, increasingly focused on costs, are concerned about how much AI spend such systems can trigger.

Last week, Uber said it limited all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spend per AI tool, after the ride-hailing company blew through its AI spend budget earlier this year.

Last month, the Financial Times reported that Amazon shuttered an internal dashboard that tracked AI use after some staff performed tasks to climb the leaderboard. An Amazon spokesperson later said the unofficial dashboard “was never intended to promote the use of AI for usage’s sake.”

At a Bloomberg conference last week. Andrew Feldman. the CEO of Cerebras Systems. described the idea of giving employees unlimited tokens as “boneheaded from the get-go.” He argued for smarter cost management—using efficiency rather than limitless access. “You don’t need a Ferrari to go to the grocery store, right?. Use a lower-cost open source model,” he said about how to be more efficient with tokens. “What we’re learning is how to shop at Costco.”.

Put simply. Lauritzen’s critique maps directly onto what these companies appear to be confronting: when token usage becomes a scoreboard. it can turn AI from an efficiency tool into a metric people chase. The challenge isn’t just whether employees use AI—it’s whether the incentives encourage the kind of work that earns the bill.

Legora Jacob Lauritzen tokenmaxxing AI dashboards AI token spend Uber token cap Amazon internal dashboard Cerebras Systems Andrew Feldman Claude Codex Cursor legal AI startup 20VC podcast AI efficiency