2026-08-07 16:18 UTCOriginal source1 min readUpdated: 2026-08-07 17:23 UTC

The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI

<a href="https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/">The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI</a> There's a fun anecdote from Accenture (apparently via leaked meeting audio recordings) in this 404 Media piece from June 24th: <blockquote> “We’re seeing from some of the data internally at least that it’s actually not our engineers that are driving the token consumption. It’s a lot of the non-engineers that are doing some of those behaviors [...] you were talking about,” Justice Kwak, Accenture’s agentic AI strategy lead, said [...] Stuart Henderson, Accenture’s client group lead, interrupts. He jokes he hopes Kwak didn’t just convert a PDF into images and then into markdown files. “I’m learning that’s one of the big token chewers,” Henderson says. “Turning PDFs into markdown: is that right?” That’s when Kwak says that’s what Accenture’s own data shows. </blockquote> Maybe if Accenture figure out that PDFs are a terrible medium for communicating information they'll be able to push that message out to the rest of the business world too! Via <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@404.media/video/7654962124053171470">@404.media on TikTok</a> Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/pdf">pdf</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/markdown">markdown</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-misuse">ai-misuse</a>

SourceSimon Willison's Weblog

Simon Willison’s Weblog

7th August 2026 - Link Blog

The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI (via) There's a fun anecdote from Accenture (apparently via leaked meeting audio recordings) in this 404 Media piece from June 24th:

“We’re seeing from some of the data internally at least that it’s actually not our engineers that are driving the token consumption. It’s a lot of the non-engineers that are doing some of those behaviors [...] you were talking about,” Justice Kwak, Accenture’s agentic AI strategy lead, said [...]

Stuart Henderson, Accenture’s client group lead, interrupts. He jokes he hopes Kwak didn’t just convert a PDF into images and then into markdown files. “I’m learning that’s one of the big token chewers,” Henderson says. “Turning PDFs into markdown: is that right?”

That’s when Kwak says that’s what Accenture’s own data shows.

Maybe if Accenture figure out that PDFs are a terrible medium for communicating information they'll be able to push that message out to the rest of the business world too!