Intelligence-per-Token: Why AI's Cost Problem Is...

Running large models is expensive. Everyone in the industry knew this, but for a while it was someone else's problem — a future problem, once revenue caught up. In 2026, the bill has come due. The phrase circulating now is "intelligence-per-token." Not capability in the abstract, but useful output per dollar of inference spend. It's an unglamorous metric, and that's kind of the point. After years of chasing benchmarks, labs are being forced to ask whether what they're building is actually econom