The short-lived corporate push for "tokenmaxxing" may have faded, but some year-end bonuses on Wall Street still depend on AI usage. A survey of 500 companies conducted by financial recruiting firm Selby Jennings found that applicants’ AI skills are judged nearly four times as important in hiring decisions as their college background.
Pay, promotions and bonuses tied to AI proficiency
According to the survey, about a quarter of US financial firms now link raises, promotions or bonuses to AI competence or demonstrated AI use. Jacob Summers, head of tech recruiting at Selby Jennings, told Semafor that this practice is more common among fintech startups and smaller firms than among well-known banks and trading houses.
New roles to monitor AI and the measurement challenge
Nearly a third of firms surveyed have created new roles or departments to track AI use. In those setups, total token burn is less important than extracting measurable value from token usage — echoing an IBM blog post from June that framed the shift as moving from “tokenmaxxing” to “valuemaxxing.”
In many organizations, however, the responsibility for monitoring AI use falls to managers, effectively turning them into part-time AI accountants who record and assess how teams deploy AI tools in their workflows.
Why this matters
The findings indicate that AI competence has become a broader expectation in the financial sector, not just an internal concern for tech teams. That can influence recruitment, career progressions and compensation structures, especially at smaller and rapidly growing firms.
(The figures and observations above are drawn from the Selby Jennings survey of 500 companies and reporting by Semafor; Jacob Summers provided comments to Semafor. The excerpt cited Jake Angelo.)
