Meta’s Adam Mosseri says AI token budgets could soon be capped per engineer

Meta 高管 Adam Mosseri 表示：未来或将对每位工程师的 AI Token 使用量设限

In a recent interview, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said he can see a time in the future, perhaps only a year or two, when putting limits on Meta employees’ AI token spend will become necessary. 在最近的一次采访中，Instagram 负责人 Adam Mosseri 表示，他预见在不久的将来（或许就在一两年内），对 Meta 员工的 AI Token（令牌）支出进行限制将成为必要。

“I think that you can imagine, at least in a year or two … that the burn rate of a strong engineer might be the same as their salary, or their cost of employment. And in that world, you’re going to probably need to put in some caps,” the Meta executive said, while speaking on Lenny’s Podcast. “我认为你可以想象一下，至少在一两年内……一名优秀工程师的（AI）消耗率可能等同于他们的薪水或雇佣成本。在那种情况下，你可能就需要设置一些上限了，”这位 Meta 高管在参加《Lenny’s Podcast》节目时说道。

AI token spend, a reference to the cost of processing AI prompts and responses, has been a much-buzzed-about subject in recent days. Meta shut down an internal AI token spend leaderboard after AI costs put the company on track for billions of dollars in 2026. AI Token 支出是指处理 AI 提示词（Prompts）和响应的成本，这已成为近日备受热议的话题。此前，由于 AI 成本导致公司 2026 年的支出预计将达到数十亿美元，Meta 已经关闭了一个内部的 AI Token 支出排行榜。

Meta is not alone in rethinking its approach to AI experimentation. Uber also had an AI reckoning after it blew through its 2026 AI coding budget by April. Soaring token costs saw Microsoft cancel Claude Code licenses, consolidating its engineers around its own Copilot CLI tool instead. Meta 并非唯一一家重新审视 AI 实验方法的公司。Uber 在 4 月份就耗尽了其 2026 年的 AI 编码预算，从而不得不重新评估其 AI 策略。飙升的 Token 成本也促使微软取消了 Claude Code 的授权，转而将其工程师整合到自家的 Copilot CLI 工具上。

Mosseri’s belief, he explained, is that AI token costs will have to be managed just like any other resource, offering an analogy to things like payroll or operating expenditure (OpEx), which is the day-to-day costs of running a business. Mosseri 解释说，他的观点是 AI Token 成本必须像管理其他资源一样进行管理。他将其比作工资单或运营支出（OpEx），即企业日常运营的成本。

“I think of it like…any other resource,” Mosseri said. “I have to decide how to deploy capacity to my different teams because I have a limited number of GPUs and CPUs and storage and RAM etc. I have to decide how to deploy OpEx for labeling budgets across my teams. I have to decide how to deploy payroll for headcount across my teams.” “我把它看作……任何其他资源一样，”Mosseri 说。“我必须决定如何向不同的团队分配算力，因为我的 GPU、CPU、存储和内存等资源是有限的。我必须决定如何为各团队分配数据标注预算，也必须决定如何为各团队分配人力成本。”

Token budgets will be the same, he added, noting that the cap per engineer would have to be proportional to the company’s trust in their ability to use the budget in an “ROI-positive” way. Meta doesn’t currently have token caps for any employee, Mosseri said, but he believes that their use could be healthy in the future. 他补充说，Token 预算也是如此。他指出，每位工程师的上限必须与公司对其“投资回报率（ROI）为正”的预算使用能力的信任程度成正比。Mosseri 表示，Meta 目前还没有对任何员工设置 Token 上限，但他认为未来实施这种限制可能是健康的。

Further down the road, he expects token costs to come down as the AI model makers enter a pricing war to attract people to use their tools over their competitors. For now, the company has managed to rein in its token costs a bit by shutting down the “silly things” that it was doing, Mosseri noted — like that token spend leaderboard. 从长远来看，他预计随着 AI 模型制造商为了吸引用户而展开价格战，Token 成本将会下降。Mosseri 指出，目前公司通过关闭一些“愚蠢的”项目（比如那个 Token 支出排行榜），已经成功地控制住了一部分 Token 成本。

“It’s not that hard to build a token incinerator, and that doesn’t create a lot of value,” he said. “建立一个 Token 消耗器并不难，但这并不能创造太大的价值，”他说。