‘Pretty Crazy’ Token Usage Is Testing Bosses’ Bet on AI
Key takeaways
- So far, 8x8’s annualized bill for Claude is “well below” that figure, says Joel Neeb, the company’s chief transformation and business operations officer.
- Neeb expects the savings and costs to eventually even out as 8x8 encourages more employees to adopt AI and it incorporates the tech into more complicated work.
- (Tokens represent the amount of content an AI model analyzes and generates.)
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-Illustration: Darrell Jackson; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story At the software company 8x8, employees are using Anthropic’s Claude to draft emails, analyze customer feedback, and write code, but so far, their growing reliance on the artificial intelligence chatbot hasn’t troubled the finance team. While other Silicon Valley companies, such as Meta, Uber, and Salesforce, have publicly expressed concerns about the growing cost of generative AI tools and have begun introducing usage caps in some cases, 8x8 says it finds itself in the black.
Over the past 18 months, the company estimates it has saved about $5 million in annual costs by canceling subscriptions to dozens of software and educational tools it deemed unnecessary in part because Claude could provide similar capabilities. So far, 8x8’s annualized bill for Claude is “well below” that figure, says Joel Neeb, the company’s chief transformation and business operations officer.
Neeb expects the savings and costs to eventually even out as 8x8 encourages more employees to adopt AI and it incorporates the tech into more complicated work. But for now, there’s still a huge gap, which “makes my chief financial officer happy,” he tells WIRED. He declined to share exact total spending on generative AI.