According to TechCrunch, NEA partner Tiffany Luck addressed the growing tension between AI hype and return on investment as enterprises grapple with managing AI costs.
The coverage references a shift from “tokenmaxxing,” described as the hottest trend in Silicon Valley earlier this year, where CEOs encouraged employees to push AI usage as far as it would go. According to TechCrunch, the consequences became apparent when the bills came due: Uber reportedly exhausted its annual AI budget within a few months, some companies cut Claude licenses for parts of their organizations, and Meta eliminated its internal leaderboard.
On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Luck discussed how startups are stepping in to help enterprises track return on AI spend, according to the publication. The podcast also covered topics including the future of personal agents and Luck’s thoughts on this year’s AI IPOs.
According to TechCrunch, the discussion touched on how enterprises are mixing and matching models instead of committing to one provider, and why forward deployed engineers are becoming a “Trojan horse” for AI adoption. Luck, who previously worked on convincing companies that e-commerce was the future, is now focused on AI’s possibilities for “magic moments” in the consumer business, according to the publication.