• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Venezuela abandoning the bolivar and adopting the U.S. dollar would be the biggest currency switch since the advent of the euro, Hanke says

2

'We will not endure' — Top Iranian leaders signal they are running out of time as economy crumbles ahead of Trump's next sanctions onslaught

3

American billionaires are showing off their farmland for elaborate hobbies, but a buying spree among the ultrarich risks pricing farmers out

1

Venezuela abandoning the bolivar and adopting the U.S. dollar would be the biggest currency switch since the advent of the euro, Hanke says

2

'We will not endure' — Top Iranian leaders signal they are running out of time as economy crumbles ahead of Trump's next sanctions onslaught

3

American billionaires are showing off their farmland for elaborate hobbies, but a buying spree among the ultrarich risks pricing farmers out
AIMeta

A Meta employee created a dashboard so coworkers can compete to be the company’s No. 1 AI token user—and Zuckerberg doesn’t even rank in the top 250

By
Jacqueline Munis
Jacqueline Munis
Former News Fellow
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Jacqueline Munis
Jacqueline Munis
Former News Fellow
Down Arrow Button Icon
April 9, 2026, 4:44 AM ET
Zuckerberg, dressed a black suit, walks away from a white car.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not rank among the leaderboard's top 250 users. Patrick T. Fallon—AFP via Getty Images
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Ever wondered how productive your coworkers actually are? Meta employees don’t have to guess.

Recommended Video

A Meta employee independently created a leaderboard that tracked how many tokens—the basic units of data or words that AI models process—the company’s more than 85,000 employees used, The Information reported on Monday. Called “Claudeonomics,” after Anthropic’s AI model, the leaderboard showed the top 250 token users and awarded employees with titles, such as “Token Legend” and “Cache Wizard.”

The leaderboard encouraged “tokenmaxxing,” a growing phenomenon in Silicon Valley which emphasizes token usage as a measure of productivity. While every AI model measures tokens differently, OpenAI estimates that one token is equal to about four characters and a single one-to-two sentence prompt requires about 30 tokens. Token usage can imply if workers are optimizing their prompts, or the number of AI agents they are using. 

But now, the fun is over: the internal AI-use leaderboard went down just two days after the news broke. 

The dashboard now reads: “We’ve really enjoyed building this app on Nest for everyone. It was meant to be a fun way for people to look at tokens, but due to data from this dashboard being shared externally, we’ve made the decision to shutter Claudeonomics for now,” reported The Information, which also reported the company has a separate official dashboard for token usage geared toward software engineers, who generally use the most tokens. 

“The employee took down the dashboard at their discretion; Meta did not request this action,” Meta told Fortune in a statement.

Last year, Meta’s Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees that “AI-driven impact” would be a “core expectation” in 2026, according to Business Insider. In January, the company overhauled its performance review system to incentivize the highest performers with upwards of a 200% bonus. 

Some employees have put AI agents to work for hours to maximize their token usage. Neither Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg nor Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth are in the top 250 token users.

In a 30-day period, total employee usage on the dashboard exceeded 60 trillion tokens, and the highest-ranked individual user averaged 281 billion tokens. Using the least expensive version of Claude Opus 4.6, which costs $5 for every million tokens, that one user alone could have cost Meta more than $1.4 million. 

Incentivizing high token use is becoming the norm in Silicon Valley. OpenAI has an employee leaderboard, and the company’s top power user used 210 billion tokens over one week in March.

Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has been a leading voice on token budgets, shared his vision for token use at Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose in March. 

“I could totally imagine in the future every single engineer in our company will need an annual token budget,” he said. “They’re going to make a few 100,000 a year as their base pay. I’m going to give them probably half of that on top of it as tokens so that they could be amplified 10 times.”

Just days later, Huang said he would be “deeply alarmed” if an engineer he paid $500,000 a year didn’t use at least $250,000 worth of tokens. He did not specify the importance of the 50% measure. 

Meta CTO Bosworth said his best engineer is spending the equivalent of his salary in tokens, but he’s “5x to 10x more productive.”

“It’s like, this is easy money,” Bosworth said. “Keep doing it. No limit.”

Fortune Daily breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms Fortune’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders. Watch here.
About the Author
By Jacqueline MunisFormer News Fellow
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in AI


Most Popular

Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • TikTok icon
  • YouTube icon

    Latest in AI


    Most Popular

    © 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
    FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.