Microsoft puts the brakes on AI: why is it limiting its use to its own employees?

Microsoft is rethinking part of its AI strategy when it comes to usage. According to 404 Media, the company will assign different token budgets to its divisions and invite each employee to check their spending to stay within them. The company’s goal is to get more value out of each token, shifting the focus from indiscriminate consumption toward results.

Better results from each token

Jay Parikh, Microsoft’s vice president, has asked engineers to measure the value of GitHub Copilot. The increasingly common term “tokenmaxxing” describes a pattern of usage in which more queries are made, more agents are used, and more models are tested, and it’s this way of working that, according to Microsoft, has to give way to management like any other critical resource.

The guidelines include budget targets starting in July 2026. Apparently, some engineers spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on tokens; which helps explain why Microsoft wants to tie each request to concrete results and adjust the limits according to usage.

GPT-5.6 as the main option

To improve efficiency, Microsoft has made GPT-5.6 the default model. The decision coincides with the drop in GPT-5.6 pricing and with Copilot’s ability to work with different models for several years now.

Microsoft is thus following a trend already set by AT&T, Meta, and Uber, with spending reaching as much as $7,500 a month per employee.