The “tokenmaxxing” era — when companies encouraged heavy AI usage with little insight into what it cost or returned — is over. In a new Forbes Enterprise Tech feature, journalist Tim Keary examines how token spend has become the metric enterprise leaders watch most closely, and turns to Lucidworks CEO Mike Sinoway for the view from inside the enterprise.
A year ago, Sinoway tells Forbes, token spend felt like the wild west. That’s changed: billing visibility is now a priority in most organizations, because — in his words — “Nobody wants a surprise bill they can’t map to productivity.”
The data backs him up. As the article notes, the Lucidworks 2026 AI Benchmark Study found that deployment cost has become one of the leading enterprise AI concerns: 58% of organizations say they’re keeping a close eye on it in 2026, up from just 3% in 2023.
The takeaway: spending tokens is easy. Tying them to value is the discipline that separates AI programs that scale from ones that get canceled.