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Disney employees have gained access to an internal view of artificial intelligence usage, and a small group of “super-users” is driving very high volumes of chatbot activity, according to screenshots and interviews described by Business Insider.
In recent months, some Disney technology staffers received access to an “AI Adoption Dashboard” that tracks AI usage across coding tools Cursor and Claude, measured in both tokens used and requests made. Two Disney tech employees told Business Insider that the dashboard provides the clearest snapshot yet of how extensively AI is being used as CEO Josh D’Amaro takes over from longtime Disney leader Bob Iger.
Screenshots reviewed by Business Insider show AI usage by roughly 4,800 product and technology employees across Disney Entertainment and ESPN over a nine-workday span in mid-April. Disney had approximately 231,000 worldwide employees as of September 27.
Business Insider reports that Disney’s dashboard is not intended to incentivize or reward “tokenmaxxing,” where engineers burn through tokens to demonstrate productivity. Still, employees may interpret the dashboard as a “leaderboard,” with “milestones” tied to streaks based on consecutive days using the tools.
The dashboard data highlighted extreme usage by power users. The largest Claude user consumed 234.2 million tokens after invoking the Anthropic chatbot about 460,600 times during the nine-workday period—equivalent to more than 51,000 invocations per workday.
Across the dashboard’s tracked users, Disney’s product and technology staff at Disney and ESPN used 3.1 billion Claude tokens and 13.3 billion Cursor tokens over the nine workdays, according to the screenshot.
One Disney tech employee’s estimated costs were approximately $1 for every 16,700 Claude tokens used and $1 per 21,200 Cursor tokens, based on dashboard data. If all dashboard users were charged at the same rate as that employee, Business Insider reports estimated costs of about $185,000 for Claude and $627,000 for Cursor over the nine-workday span.
Analysts cautioned that tokens are an imperfect proxy for real-world costs. Will Sommer, a quantitative modeling analyst at Gartner who studies AI usage, said token usage and pricing can vary widely depending on factors including the nature of the request and the model used. Sommer also said Disney’s power users likely are not “breaking the bank” based on the dashboard information shared.
Sommer noted that the cost of 1 million tokens for Claude can range from $0.25 to $15, according to its website.
Business Insider also reported that some users are using AI in ways that can drive unusually high consumption. One prolific Cursor user used 287.1 million tokens over about 2,800 requests during the nine-workday span.
Val Bercovici, chief AI officer at WEKA, said that while the numbers may not be large for a pure-play tech company, they can be “up there” for a Fortune 500 company. He attributed the high volumes to “agentic” behavior—so-called “agent swarms,” which are automated bots that create and delegate tasks to other automated bots.
Bercovici said larger numbers “can only be agentic,” adding that such consumption levels are normal for someone who frequently invokes agent swarms. He also said advanced software developers using Claude can go through about 10 million tokens per day.
Sommer concluded that Disney’s AI power users appear to be putting agents to work, explaining why a small number of users show dramatically higher consumption and request counts than others. He said it makes sense to see “astronomically high” usage among users who rely on agent workflows.
The broader implication, according to Sommer, is that software engineers are evolving alongside AI—moving from coding by hand to managing bots that complete tasks. “If you have agents doing the work for you, then you are significantly more productive,” Sommer said.
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