Microsoft Employees Spend Median $300 Monthly on AI, One Hits $28,000 as Company Monitors Usage

Microsoft staff are burning a median $300 a month on AI, according to their own spreadsheet

The median self-reported spend was about $300 over 28 days and the highest was $28,000, in a company whose per-employee tracking tool would need a works agreement before it reached a German desk An internal spreadsheet where Microsoft employees swap pay details now carries a column for monthly AI spend, with a median of about $300 over 28 days across roughly 350 entries. Business Insider found no meaningful link between heavy AI use and bonuses, raises or promotions. Microsoft employees have started comparing their AI bills the way they compare their salaries. An internal spreadsheet where staff voluntarily post raises, bonuses and stock awards now carries a column for how much AI they burned through last month. The document is one TNW has already mined. We used its pay columns this week to show Microsoft has split into two populations on compensation, and the AI column is a separate question. The number is larger than most people would guess. Across roughly 350 entries the median was about $300 over 28 days, and the highest single figure was $28,000. It varies enormously by team. CoreAI reported a median of $975, Security $526 and Microsoft AI $490, while the customer and partner organisation came in lowest at $134 and also produced that $28,000 outlier. For scale, a Microsoft 365 Copilot seat costs $30 a month. Accenture gave one to 743,000 people this spring, and the median Microsoft employee is spending ten times that on themselves. The finding that matters is an absence. Business Insider reports no meaningful correlation between how much AI someone used and their bonus rating, merit increase or chance of promotion. The data deserves its caveats. It is self-reported, voluntary and anonymous, covers around 350 people out of 223,000, and Microsoft says the tracking tool is still in early testing. It also lands in a familiar pattern. TNW has reported that the hours AI saves workers are mostly thrown away rather than banked or redirected. A tool that itemises this per employee is not a neutral thing to install in Europe. In Germany the works council has a co-determination right over technical devices capable of monitoring behaviour or performance. The threshold is lower than it sounds. The Federal Labour Court has held since 1975 that a system only has to be suitable for monitoring, not designed for it, which is why even spreadsheets and calendars have triggered the rule. The appetite for measuring people at work is not in doubt. Skan AI raised $63M to observe how office staff actually do their jobs and build agents that copy them. So one spreadsheet says two things. Working on AI at Microsoft pays better, and using a lot of it does not, which are not the same proposition at all.

Microsoft cracks down on employee AI use after one worker spent $28,000 in 28 days

Microsoft thinks AI usage should be meaningful, not excessive * Some Microsoft workers were found spending $10,000 to $28,000 on AI tokens every month * The median is a much lower $300, but that's based off a tiny percentage of workers * Microsoft says AI usage should lead to meaningful outcomes Some Microsoft workers are racking up some pretty hefty AI compute bills, with one of the company's workers from the Customer and Partner Solutions business spending $28,000 in tokens over a single 28-day period. The figures, reported by Gadget Review, came from internal spreadsheets, which are used by workers to voluntarily share compensation information like salaries, bonuses and stock awards. It's a spreadsheet which, in 2026, gained a new column for monthly AI usage, in which employees can track how much they spend in USD equivalent in terms of AI consumption. Microsoft workers are using thousands in AI compute every month Nearly 600 US workers reportedly contributed information to the spreadsheet, with around 350 of them sharing their AI usage figures. Importantly, the company employs more than 223,000 workers globally, participation was voluntary, and figures were self-reported, so the data shared by Gadget Review is not representative of all workers. The median reported usage was also around $300 per employee per month, so the $28,000 figure is either an extreme or a mistake. The data also shows how usage varies by Microsoft department, with the likes of CoreAI ($975) spending the highest median figure. Security ($526), Microsoft AI ($490), Cloud and AI ($325), Experiences and Devices ($250), Azure ($241) and Customer and Partner Solutions ($134) each have lower medians. Similarly, those groups also saw large variations, with some workers spending up to $16,000 within CoreAI, $15,000 for Cloud and AI, and $10,000 for Security. While the data doesn't provide an accurate overview, the company is said to be monitoring token consumption value more closely to track individuals who use large amounts of tokens. This comes after years of encouragement to incentivize workers to use AI. The knock-on effect of that has been a trend dubbed 'tokenmaxxing', where users deliberately consume large amounts of tokens to become visible on tracking dashboards. It's a trend seen across the industry, including at Amazon. "Tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for," CoreAI EVP Jay Parikh previously said in an internal memo. "I want all of us focused on maximising outcomes that move the needle for our customers and our business." Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.