July 24, 2025

Tokenomics: Understanding How to Track AI Spending

SPM Mythbusters Series

3 min read

Key Takeaways

Discover how the concept of tokens is being employed to account for AI usage.
Measure AI spending to provide financial visibility and ensure value is delivered.
Leverage strategic portfolio management (SPM) and AI to contend with increasing complexity.

Strategic portfolio management (SPM) can be complex, especially with significant investments in AI and cloud automation—domains where business leaders often lack confidence in their investments. This is a challenge that will only grow more critical: AI spending is projected to comprise 30% of the increase in IT budgets in 2025 and enterprises worldwide are expected to spend over $630 billion on AI by 2028.

Along with this increased use and spending, an emerging concept is changing how teams account for AI. That concept is "tokens."

Tokens are the measure of AI computer and data use. Tokens also relate to the short-term and long-term memory needed for AI agents to maintain context and give answers. When the use of AI and tokens expands, cloud computing can become more costly and difficult to contend with. Tracking these tokens through a strategic plan, such as by employing SPM, can help improve outcomes. SPM can help leaders set clear, measurable targets and govern forecasts.

Better planning provides positive outcomes

It is critical to deliver a clear and comprehensive plan for token management to all stakeholders. This is vital in reducing token waste. Generative AI capabilities, like natural language processing and text generation, can streamline and enhance these planning and documentation efforts.

What's the long-term vision?

There is a lot to think about when creating plans for rolling out AI. But there needs to be an understanding of how you'll succeed. To be successful, leaders will need to be able to learn the right things, so they can intelligently manage spending and capacity, not just of their people, but their non-labor resources, such as tokens. Next, to determine how to implement a plan, you must leverage AI and machine learning to better understand and address market requirements, fostering increased value and experiences for customers.

It is important to start with AI and proactively address its potential to reshape 80% of project management by 2030. This will create the need for new skills, and is expected to have a strong impact on Value Stream Management. Don’t fall behind, lead the change by adopting AI to optimize your project management.

Tag(s): ValueOps , Clarity , Strategic Portfolio Management , SPM

Brian Nathanson

Brian Nathanson is a recovering certified Project Management Professional now serving as the Head of Product Management Clarity at Broadcom. He is the host of several popular Clarity-related customer webcasts (Office Hours, Release Previews, and the End-to-End Modern UX Demos) and has conducted many hours of both...

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