Tokenmaxxing Didn’t Die. It Mutated

Despite backlash against excessive AI compute spending, companies like Shopify and AI startup Olive continue to invest heavily in premium frontier AI models such as OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic's Fable 5. Shopify restricts engineers to using only frontier models, while Olive's founder reported spending $4.5 million on 774 billion AI tokens in a month, emphasizing speed and competitive advantage.