LinkedIn·Wednesday, 29 July 2026·28d ago

"Intelligence is becoming a utility you buy on a meter." Sam Altman said. I think most companies are actually dramatically underestimating…

Christophe Sion

Co-founder at Husk | Revolutionizing Startup Finances

"Intelligence is becoming a utility you buy on a meter." Sam Altman said. I think most companies are actually dramatically underestimating what it means for their finances. We are watching AI tokens become the kilowatt-hour of this era. The unit of measurement for how much intelligence a company consumes. And economists are already using token data, 380 trillion of them in one recent study, to track how AI is reshaping markets far beyond tech. Airlines, banks, retailers, manufacturers. The "AI premium" is showing up everywhere. For founders, it's another ballgame. When a cost becomes a utility, it stops being a one-off decision and becomes a continuous, usage-based drain that quietly compounds. We already had "tokenmaxxing," free AI spending for everyone. That's over. Now the biggest companies in the world are in damage control, cutting token bills they let run wild. Startups are next. Most have no line item for AI, no owner for it, and no real-time view of it. Especially the finance person in startups has no understanding of it. How to report on it, how to make sense of it, what does it mean for the company? So teams still just filing it under "software" will be explaining a very large surprise to their board. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. AI is about to prove that rule all over again.