A little over a month after the Department of Defense (DOD) boasted that nearly half of its 3.5 million employees were using artificial intelligence at work, members of the US Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) received an email informing them that they had burnt through their supply and needed to limit use.

Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that unlimited tokens would be offered, by mid-June the pool was exhausted. The Army has chosen to renew token usage at current levels but it remains unclear if the pool will be renewed after October 1st.

The Army uses Ask Sage, a multimodal generative AI platform that includes models from Alphabet’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to an anonymous Army employee speaking to WIRED, ‘the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service.’

Ask Sage is used by the Army to power its enterprise large language model workspace and is accredited for Controlled Unclassified Information. It is also utilized by the DOD’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) for acquisitions. The Army has been pushing workers to use generative AI, with employees being given an allotment of at least 200,000 tokens per month.

Employees who had signed up for Ask Sage but were not regularly using it received emails encouraging them to use more of their allocated tokens.