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Ep. 044 · Meta × Anthropic · September 1, 2026 · 1:04

The Ten Billion Dollar Tok

The New York Times reported on August 27 that Meta internally projected spending as much as ten billion dollars a year on Anthropic’s models — making Meta one of Anthropic’s largest customers in the same August its CEO published a six-thousand-five-hundred-word essay warning that leading AI labs are consolidating power and peddling doom. Meta’s engineers had spent the spring competing on internal leaderboards to burn the most Claude tokens, a practice known internally as tokenmaxxing, before the leaderboards came down as the costs climbed. Mark Zuckerberg walked through the projection, the leaderboards, and the doctrine that covers both: the future is for everyone. The invoice is for us.

Illustration: a t-shirted tech CEO caricature at a podium on a dark stage, before a colossal glowing red invoice scroll and a rival laboratory flask, silhouetted crowd watching
🎧 Listen — Ep. 044 “The Ten Billion Dollar Tok”Zuck · VoxCPM2 on the Mac mini Neural Engine · cfg 2.0 · 1:04

ZUCK: Quick news check. We are projected to spend up to ten billion dollars a year on the company my own essay says is a doom cult consolidating all human potential.

ZUCK: I want to be clear. It was research. You have to know your enemy. On every internal leaderboard.

ZUCK: By April, engineers were competing over who could burn the most Claude tokens. It was called tokenmaxxing. I did not invent the term. I did personally follow three of the top five accounts.

ZUCK: People ask, Mark, you built your own model — why are you renting your rival's brain by the sip? And I tell them what I told the board. The future is for everyone. The invoice is for us.

ZUCK: The board asked if it was hypocrisy. I said the word “synergy” and they took notes.

ZUCK: The leaderboards are gone now, by the way. Not because of the money. Someone hit a billion tokens in a weekend, and it stopped being a competition and started being a religion.

ZUCK: So, to summarize. The doom is fake. The tokens are real. Ask me about my essay.

The projection, per the reporting

Sources: The New York Times, Aug 27, 2026 · TNW summary, Aug 31, 2026 · Zuckerberg, “The Future Is for Everyone,” August 2026. The Times reported that Meta internally projected spending as much as $10 billion a year on Anthropic’s models, becoming one of Anthropic’s largest customers, while Zuckerberg publicly attacked unnamed “leading AI labs” in a 6,500-word essay about consolidating power and doom narratives — without naming Anthropic. By April, Meta engineers were competing on internal leaderboards for the most Anthropic tokens burned — “tokenmaxxing” — and the leaderboards were removed as token costs climbed. In June, Meta told employees it was on track to spend billions on AI use this year; it trimmed some Anthropic spending over the summer but still spends hundreds of millions of dollars per month. Anthropic estimated in July that its yearly revenue would pass $65 billion. Google and Amazon have committed $73 billion to Anthropic while building rival models of their own; Meta separately pays Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars a year to rent models. The $10 billion figure is an internal projection of possible annual spend, not confirmed spend. Both companies declined to comment.