Linux Foundation Announces Tokenomicon, a New Conference for the Economics of AI

Linux Foundation also releases FOCUS 1.4 and launches two new certifications, AI Value and Technology Value, at FinOps X in San Diego

SAN DIEGO, June 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Following last week's announcement of the intent to launch the Tokenomics Foundation, the Linux Foundation today unveiled Tokenomicon, a new conference dedicated to the economics of AI. Tokenomicon will bring together the practitioners, enterprises, model providers, and infrastructure operators working to measure and maximize the value of tokens and AI spend. The flagship event will take place in San Diego, June 7-10, 2027.

The conference arrives as tokens become the new unit of technology spend. As enterprises move generative and agentic AI workloads from pilot to production, AI has become one of the largest and fastest-growing lines on the enterprise technology budget, yet the discipline to measure and govern that spend has not kept pace. Goldman Sachs research projects global token usage will multiply roughly 24 times between 2026 and 2030. Tokenomicon is built to close the gap, giving technology practitioners a neutral, community venue to compare cost and efficiency across models and providers and to turn AI spend into measurable business value.

Alongside the San Diego flagship, the Tokenomics community will gather at regional events, including: Amsterdam, September 22-23, 2026, and London, February 8-9, 2027. "Naming the AI cost problem was the easy part. Tokenomicon is where the people actually solving it get in a room together. Practitioners, the companies buying AI at scale, the providers selling it, all working from the same facts. That is how a discipline gets built, and it is how the industry turns token spend into real business value." said J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation.

FOCUS 1.4 builds the bridge to finance

The Linux Foundation also announced general availability of FOCUS v1.4, the open specification that normalizes billing data across cloud, SaaS, data center, and other technology vendors. Ratified by the FOCUS Steering Committee on June 4, 2026, the release adds two datasets and 47 columns with zero incompatible changes for existing implementations.

FOCUS 1.4 is the first release that lets engineering, finance, and FinOps teams work from the same billing facts without provider-specific tooling. It closes three gaps: consistent cost recognition across providers through a provider-agnostic covered and covering charge framework, end-to-end invoice reconciliation through the new Invoice Detail and Billing Period datasets, and rigorous standards of data integrity that allow FOCUS to serve as a system of record. The release lays the groundwork for FOCUS 1.5, which will bring unit and token economics into view by introducing provider list pricing and native AI token tracking.

"The improvements will especially benefit engineering teams who must align with finance and accounting teams alongside FinOps practitioners, with end-to-end billing visibility from commitment to consumption to invoice," said Mike Fuller, CTO of the FinOps Foundation. "FOCUS continues to answer the needs of multiple teams, with one specification to better maximize the business value of technology across an entire organization."

Two new certifications

The Foundation launched two new certifications. The Technology Value certification equips practitioners to manage spend across multiple technology categories and apply the right FinOps approach to each. The AI Value certification extends that discipline to AI and token-based spend, preparing practitioners for the standards taking shape across the Tokenomics Foundation and FOCUS.

"As technology spending spans platforms and infrastructure types, practitioners need to understand their organization's business and technology goals to define where FinOps applies, how it operates in each context, and what success looks like," said Steve Trask, Chief Operations Officer of the FinOps Foundation. "This certification builds those skills so practitioners maximize value across portfolio spending and apply the right FinOps approach to each one."

About the Tokenomics Foundation
The Tokenomics Foundation, a Linux Foundation program focused on the best practices and standards for managing the production, consumption and monetization of tokens to generate business outcomes and AI value.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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SOURCE The Linux Foundation