Microsoft has 'good news' and 'bad news' for engineers using AI coding tools

Microsoft has told its engineers to keep using AI at work, and to start noticing what it costs. In an internal email to his Core AI teams, executive vice president Jay Parikh wrote that "tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for," and said the company is now managing token spend with the same discipline it applies to every other critical resource. The email, first reported by 404 Media, also confirms that Microsoft has made OpenAI's GPT-5.6—a cheaper model than the frontier options engineers had been reaching for—the default for internal use.The good news for Microsoft engineers is that nobody is being told to stop. Parikh was explicit that he doesn't want to slow the company's march toward being "AI-first," and framed the change as a value exercise rather than a cost-cutting one. The bad news is everything attached to that framing.