Fintech company Slash is touting a new product that doesn’t quite fit in line with its usual offerings — an AI-coded shooter game.
The San Francisco-based company wrote that one of its employees racked up a hefty AI coding bill building a video game.
In an X post on Tuesday, the company said Nicolas Brilliante, its head of strategic verticals, spent $80,000 in tokens on the Slash card for a brainrot shooter.
“We encouraged the company last week to start vibe coding more but @nickbruhman burned $80k in credits on the Slash card for a brainrot shooter,” the company wrote.
Literally called “Brainrot shooter,” it is a bare-bones game set in a Minecraft-esque setting, where the player has to shoot characters with internet-viral brainrot names like “skibidi toilet” and “tung tung tung sahur.”
Prediction market Polymarket picked up the news, writing in an X post: “Fintech startup Slash reveals it was forced to roll back its AI coding push after an employee burned $80,000 in tokens in the first week.”
Brilliante posted a screenshot that appeared to be a dashboard of his AI usage, showing he had spent $81,267.
“This was a genuine accident, i underestimated my own ability,” Brilliante wrote.
Later, reposting a Polymarket X post, he wrote: “This is actually insane, am I going to become a case study for how AI spend can get out of control.”
Brilliante isn’t the only employee who’s been building things fast and furiously in the era of tokenmaxxing.
Many companies are now looking at their AI spending with a more critical lens.
Some firms have found that AI costs did not translate into productivity gains, and have cut back on AI budgets.
The artificial intelligence market is growing rapidly, and companies are trying to find ways to manage their AI costs.
As the use of AI becomes more widespread, companies will need to find ways to balance the benefits of AI with the potential costs.
For now, Slash is trying to make the most of its $80,000 brainrot shooter, asking people to play it so they can write it off as a marketing expense.
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