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 Source: [https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/7/pdfs-are-terrible/](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/7/pdfs-are-terrible/) 7th August 2026 \- Link Blog **[The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI](https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/)**\([via](https://www.tiktok.com/@404.media/video/7654962124053171470)\) 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\!