That magic trick only works for publicly traded stocks.

Most firms are not a google or a Microsoft - a firms cash balance can become a strategic weapon in the right environment. So wasting money is not a great idea. Lest we forget dividends.

Moreover if you have a budget set re. Spend on tokens - you have rationing. Therefore the firm should be trying to get the most out of token spend. If you are wasting tokens on stuff that doesn’t create a benefit financially for the firm then indeed it is not inline with proper corporate financial theory.

No, it works for any VC-backed companies. Something like 60% of VC funding last year went to AI companies. VCs aren't going to give you a money unless you're building an agentic AI-native agent platform for agents.

No Employees of publicly traded firms benefit from short-term gains in the stock price, assuming the stock price jump holds throughout the period of grant/vesting.

People who work at VC-backed firms do not get to enjoy the same degree of liquidity, not even close. There can be some outliers but that is 0.1% of all.

Can't believe simple stuff like this has to be said.

CFOs or VPs absolutely benefit by hyping their company up to private investors by allowing tokenmaxxing to go on unchecked. Tender offers, acquisitions, and aquihires all exist. Or just good old fashioned resume padding by saying you "enabled AI transformation" or whatever helps you land a big payday at some other company.