Chamath: our token bill doubles every 45 days, output up just 5%
bittingthembits · x · 2026-10-04
Built around Chamath's claim: his company's AI token bill is doubling every 45 days while downstream productivity gains top out around 5%. Per his CTO, squeezing the next iteration of improvement takes vastly more tokens because results have effectively asymptoted.
The author uses this to argue for Bittensor: it doesn't need to beat GPT-5 on benchmarks — it should be the open market where the next efficiency breakthrough gets built, deployed and priced by competition, rather than somewhere in San Francisco. Chamath advised getting out before this seeps into the water table; the author counters that when incumbents crack, the value goes to whoever built the open market.
Note: the latter half is opinion; Chamath's cost figures are secondhand.
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