Goldman: token demand to grow 18x by Sept 2026, but frontier demand lags at 8-9x
rohanpaul_ai · x · 2026-09-27
Goldman Sachs: AI enters a volume economy
Per Goldman Sachs research, total token demand is accelerating—growing about 18x on an index from December 2025 to September 2026—while frontier-model token demand grows much more slowly at roughly 8-9x over the same period.
- Inference is commoditizing: the marginal AI token increasingly comes from cheaper, smaller, open-source, or routed models rather than compute-heavy frontier models, shifting the hyperscaler infrastructure math.
- The core tension: to justify continued capex, token demand growth must outrun declining token prices. Competitive open-source models are pushing average prices down, and frontier demand measures slowed in July.
- Takeaway: token growth alone no longer sustains the investment-spending thesis, raising the bar for the hyperscaler capex cycle.
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