Tokens Are Not a Commodity
MikePFrank · x · 2026-07-20
The author argues that tokens are not a commodity. Treating them like a uniformly priced unit, like a "barrel of oil," ignores the massive differences in compute and response length across various requests.
They further predict that the per-token pricing model will ultimately lose to open source because Labs aren't reflecting the true value-add in their billing. Tokens are more like a unit of compressed data, rather than intelligence, compute, or value itself.
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