How Much Do Companies Spend on AI Tokens Per Employee?

Shawn Wang says most companies spend about $10 to $200 per employee on AI tokens. AI-native companies turn the comparison into a percentage, roughly 10%. An average AI startup employee is about 1x, so token spend matches employee spend, and the range runs up to 5 to 10x token spend.

On raw tokens, Tenex lands between one to one and two to one, and the ratio comes off as pretty high. The question on the team is when to reach for the biggest model. Costs have lately been driven way down from Opus 5.5. For a stretch, everyone used Astra and Fable because the results were the best, but the models are expensive. Token maxing and token leaderboards flipped into too much cost, and the overrun was the most predictable thing in the world.

The worry was real as headcount grew. No one on the team really ascribed to token maxing, yet a few moments still landed on the same line: if the boss is going to pay for it, go nuts.