What started as an experiment in AI-powered coding turned into an expensive lesson for fintech startup Slash after an employee racked up a massive bill while creating a viral internet-themed game.
The incident has emerged as a striking example of how quickly AI development costs can escalate, with the employee spending more than $80,000 in AI credits while building the online shooter game.
The San Francisco-based company drew attention to the incident in a post on X, revealing that one of its employees had accumulated an unexpectedly large bill while experimenting with AI-assisted coding. The project resulted in “Brainrot Shooter,” a basic first-person game inspired by internet meme culture.
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“We encouraged the company last week to start vibe coding more but @nickbruhman burned $80k in credits on the Slash card for a brainrot shooter,” the company wrote on X. “Pls play it so we can write this off as a marketing expense.”
The game places players in a block-style virtual environment reminiscent of Minecraft, where they battle meme-inspired characters carrying viral internet names such as “Skibidi Toilet” and “Tung Tung Tung Sahur.”
The employee behind the project, Nicolas Brilliante, who serves as Slash’s head of strategic verticals, later shared what appeared to be a screenshot of his AI usage dashboard. The image showed total spending of $81,267 on AI tools and tokens.
“This was a genuine accident, i underestimated my own ability,” Brilliante posted on X.
As the story gained traction online, prediction market platform Polymarket brought up the incident, posting that Slash had been forced to rethink its AI coding push after the employee consumed $80,000 worth of tokens within a week.
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Responding to the growing attention, Brilliante joked about becoming a cautionary tale for companies embracing AI development. Reposting Polymarket’s comment, he wrote: “This is actually insane, am I going to become a case study for how AI spend can get out of control.”
The episode arrives at a time when businesses across industries are increasingly encouraging employees to use AI tools to accelerate software development and boost productivity. However, it also showed a growing concern among companies about monitoring usage costs as AI-powered coding becomes more widespread.
While AI has dramatically reduced the time required to build software products, the Slash incident highlights that faster development does not always translate into lower costs, especially when usage of advanced AI models goes unchecked.