Microsoft Executive Frames AI Tokens As Compensation

At GeekWire's Agents of Transformation event in March 2026, Microsoft EVP Charles Lamanna said job candidates increasingly demand dedicated AI token budgets, citing requests of $100 to several hundred per day and suggesting roughly $100,000 annually. He argued firms that allocate tokens can boost productivity up to threefold, based on internal pilots, and urged companies to embed token budgets into compensation to retain AI-augmented engineers.