Vibe Coding accidentally burned 550,000 yuan worth of tokens, and he turned around and made 700 million yuan by riding the wave of mockery
An employee responded to the company's call and immersed themselves in the world of Vibe Coding, diligently creating a pixel - style brainrot FPS game.
Before he could fully enjoy his sense of accomplishment, he casually glanced at something.
Oh my god, this thing cost me $81,267 in tokens (equivalent to 550,000 RMB)???
Wouldn't that mean I've caused a huge, earth - shattering disaster!
(Here, you must loudly imitate the voice of Lady Wang from "A Dream of Splendor".mp3)
The boss just encouraged everyone to do Vibe Coding, not to spend a fortune!
The company was also quite speechless. They could only share the news with a heavy heart, hoping that everyone passing by would come and play this little game. They considered the $80,000 bill as the marketing cost for people to get to know their company through the game.
Things have come to this...
Hey, why is there a twist?
Within 48 hours of the game's launch, it attracted 6,912 players, with a cumulative playtime of 8,986 hours. Three brands also actively inquired about advertising cooperation.
What was originally an "expense incident" was quickly renamed a "strategic project" by the company.
Do you think the story ends here?
There's more excitement.
The employee later posted good news on X, saying that this brainrot little game that cost $80,000 has brought $100 million in new AUM to the company.
That's approximately 700 million RMB.
Calculated like this, the initial AI bill that was enough to get someone fired on the spot had a return rate of over 1,200 times.
This is like the story of the old man who lost his horse. In the end, not only did the horse come back on its own, but it also brought a whole herd with it.
$80,000 for just a brainrot little game from Vibe Coding
This American company is called Slash, a corporate financial services company that mainly provides commercial bank accounts, corporate cards, and fund management services to businesses.
Not long before this incident, Slash had just announced that the scale of assets under management on its platform had exceeded $1 billion.
Meanwhile, the company was also actively promoting the use of AI among employees, especially encouraging everyone to try Vibe Coding, which has recently become popular among programmers worldwide.
Vibe Coding focuses on the idea that "you may not know how to code, but you must dare to put forward requirements."
So, Nicolas Brilliante, the strategic business leader of Slash (we'll affectionately call him Nick from now on), was eager to Vibe a little game.
The game was finally named "Brainrot Shooter".
It uses a first - person shooting gameplay, and the map is made up of pixel squares, a little bit similar to "Minecraft". Players run around the map with weapons, shooting at internet brainrot characters like Skibidi Toilet and Tung Tung Tung Sahur.
Well, this game, from its graphics, gameplay to development scale, is more like a quickly put - together web demo.
If it were put in the game store, players could probably guess the whole gameplay just by looking at the name.
But Nick tearfully said that this thing made him spend $81,267 in AI credits like water within a week.
He also self - mocked to the onlookers, saying that it was indeed an accident and that he had underestimated his own ability.
Not the ability to develop games, but the ability to burn tokens.
It was quite something!
The news quickly spread, and onlookers said that they had made much more complex games and it was impossible to burn $80,000.
Some onlookers even seriously calculated for Slash, thinking that even if the employee used the most expensive models and let the AI work continuously for a week, it was hard to explain such an exaggerated expenditure.
In addition to the enthusiastic onlookers, the prediction market Polymarket also came to watch, saying that Slash might reconsider its internal AI programming strategy because of this incident.
What to do? What can be done???
This world is so unpredictable.
Actually, quite a few people/companies have caused such disasters.
In December last year, Uber introduced AI programming tools like Claude Code and Cursor to all its engineers, encouraging Vibe Coding. As a result, they burned through the annual budget in four months.
Other companies have also gradually realized something.
On July 1st, a UBS analyst wrote in a report: "Based on conversations with more than a dozen corporate IT executives in the past few weeks, 60% of enterprises are now restricting AI spending in some way by setting a certain level of safeguards."
The situation took a sharp turn, and the accident became a good story
At that time, many onlookers had only one question in mind: Nick, when are you going to get fired? Waiting online, quite urgent.
Nick had no other choice. He just wanted to salvage what he could.
Slash officially said on X that since things had come to this, please come and play our Vibe Coding masterpiece.
It would be great if the finance department could believe that this $80,000 is marketing expenses.
However, before the firing notice arrived, the game became popular.
Slash then announced the game's performance within 48 hours of its launch.
- A total of 6,912 players entered the game
- The cumulative playtime reached 8,986 hours
- The highest number of concurrent players was 437
- On average, each player played for about 1.3 hours
That's not the main point.
The main point is that three brands actively approached to inquire about advertising cooperation!
Slash's finance department's attitude then did a 180 - degree turn.
The definition of this little game within the company was officially upgraded from an "expense incident" to a "strategic initiative".
Well, what can you say about this ╮(╯▽╰)╭
It was called an accident when no one played, but after it got traffic, they started talking about strategic value. To put it nicely, the company knows how to adapt to the situation.
Nick also regained his confidence, saying that although the $80,000 couldn't be recovered, the game could continue to be iterated until it was really worth millions of dollars.
Nick and the company began to iterate the game while making money by placing in - game ads.
The first batch of advertising partners soon made their appearance.
Riding on the wave of traffic, Slash quickly introduced AI companies like Melius and Bland into the game.
A corporate financial services company unexpectedly got a new media advertising space because an employee made a brainrot shooting game with AI.
Exciting, isn't it?
As long as there's enough traffic, causing trouble can be packaged as innovation.
Brought $100 million in AUM
As Chinese people know, after the Tang Monk and his three disciples retrieved the scriptures from the Great Thunder Monastery, the story of "Journey to the West" didn't end.
Because they forgot to ask the Buddha when the old turtle in the Tongtian River could cultivate into a human, the old turtle was furious. It shook its body and threw the four disciples, the white horse, and the scriptures into the river.
Nick's story has turned from sad to happy. Can it be considered a happy ending?
No, this thing isn't over yet.
Not long after, Nick posted again, this time even more gloriously -
Remember when everyone laughed at me for burning $80,000 in AI credits? Now, this little game made through Vibe Coding has brought $100 million in AUM to Slash.
As far as he knows, no one has ever achieved this level through a Vibe Coding game before.
AUM stands for Assets Under Management, which usually refers to the total amount of client funds managed by the platform.
That means the brainrot game didn't directly bring much revenue to the company, but after the game became popular, about $100 million in new funds entered its platform.
Slash didn't further disclose how many clients the funds came from, the statistical period, and how to specifically prove that these new AUMs were brought by the game.
So, this $100 million is still self - reported data from the company and the person involved, lacking third - party verification.
However, even if we don't attribute all the new AUM to the game, the promotional effect brought by Brainrot Shooter is quite remarkable.
It's really amazing. A fintech company that originally mainly served corporate clients has now entered the public eye more widely through a little game with rough graphics.
Originally, I wanted to use the phrases "Lose at sunrise, gain at sunset" or "A blessing in disguise" to express my thoughts after reading this story.
A few days later, Nick smiled smugly:
Don't worry, there's a second level.
One More Thing
Just when I thought things had settled down, there was a sudden bombshell.
After the story of "an employee spending $80,000 to make a game and unexpectedly bringing back $100 million in AUM for the company" had completely spread, Nick revealed the final truth.
The $81,267 AI bill was fake!
He admitted that the amount in the screenshot was manually changed using the browser's Inspect Element feature.
The real AI cost of the first version of Brainrot Shooter was only about $80. After continuing to fix bugs and add content, the cumulative cost didn't exceed $200.
The previous token - adding bill that made the onlookers' hearts go "Oh my god, how could this happen - Laughing, this guy is going to get fired - Well, the company is a bit kind - Wow, they actually made money, admirable" was a complete hoax from beginning to end.
Well, my left brain says, I'm speechless. It's just a marketing stunt?
My right brain says, to be fair, this marketing was quite successful!
Now, let's rewrite a complete summary of this "Vibe Coding pixel brainrot little game sky - high bill incident":
Nick and the company used less than $200 to Vibe Code a brainrot little game, and then casually Vibe Marketed a global news story.
Reference links:
[1]https://x.com/nickbruhman/status/2070558467010580877?s=20
[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/ubs-enterprises-ai-spending-tokens-2026-7?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[3]https://x.com/nickbruhman/status/2072703116667916307
This article is from the WeChat official account "QbitAI", author: Heng Yu. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.