Tailscale's Remy Guercio on what comes after token maxing

At the AI Engineer World’s Fair 2026, Tailscale’s Remy Guercio argued that organizations are shifting from “token maxing,” or exploring what large-context AI models and coding agents can accomplish, toward “ROI maxing,” focused on understanding the value behind rapidly growing AI bills. He contends that per-token pricing is an insufficient measure because models and agent harnesses can differ substantially in cost per completed task, caching efficiency, and number of interaction turns. Tailscale’s beta Aperture product is designed as an LLM and MCP gateway that centralizes provider access, attributes usage by user, model, and other dimensions, manages credentials, and applies budgets and security controls. Guercio cautions that consolidating around a single AI provider may simplify billing but can limit experimentation and obscure comparative performance, while formal evaluations are often difficult for nontechnical workflows. Tailscale plans to add arbitrary request labels so teams can connect AI spending to units such as pull requests, bug fixes, or experiments, enabling organizations to assess whether higher usage supports more productive experimentation and better outcomes.

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