Huang Renxun proposes incorporating AI Tokens into engineer compensation; Silicon Valley has already listed token quotas as a factor in recruitment negotiations.

Gate News reports that on March 18, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang proposed during the GTC 2026 keynote speech that AI Tokens (the basic billing unit for processing text with large language models) should be incorporated into engineers’ compensation systems. He stated that Silicon Valley has already included “the number of Token quotas attached to work” as a factor in recruitment negotiations, and engineers with Token quotas will see a significant boost in productivity. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a more macro perspective on this, saying in the May 2024 All-In podcast that a “universal basic computing power” model may emerge in the future, where every citizen receives a GPT-7 computing quota that can be used personally, resold, or donated. Altman also mentioned at the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit this month that the core business of AI model providers will shift toward “selling Tokens,” similar to utilities like water and electricity. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that if large-scale Token production does not effectively improve efficiency in healthcare, education, and public sectors, society will find it difficult to tolerate the massive energy consumption of AI data centers.