NEA’s Tiffany Luck says enterprises are still figuring out their AI ROI
TL;DR
On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, NEA partner Tiffany Luck says enterprises are still working out AI ROI: usage is high, measurement is often weak. The earlier Silicon Valley trend of tokenmaxxing pushed employees to use AI as aggressively as possible. Now companies are checking the bill. TechCrunch cites examples: Uber reportedly burned through its annual AI budget in a few months, some companies cut Claude seats, and Meta killed an internal usage leaderboard.
Nauti's Take
Tokenmaxxing sounds like progress, but often means uncontrolled spend with better branding. Companies have treated every extra AI interaction as if it were a productivity signal.
The more useful question is colder: which work became faster, better, or cheaper? Vendors that cannot answer that are not selling transformation.
They are selling consumption.
Briefingshow
The next phase of enterprise AI will be judged less by demo magic and more by cost centers. If CFOs see licenses, API calls, and agent experiments growing faster than measurable productivity, budgets will tighten. For vendors, usage alone will not be enough; value has to show up per workflow, team, or customer.
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