a16z: Agents burn 5x the tokens of humans, up 14x in six months as AWS rewires for machine users
a16z · x · 2026-10-09
a16z amplifies its interview with AWS CEO Matt Garman: "Your next users are machines."
- Agents burn roughly 5x the tokens humans do, a figure up 14x in six months
- Garman says teams increasingly want a cloud that's great for agents, not just people — e.g. databases that start in three seconds
- Many agents spin up a database, do some work, then discard it — five-nines durability isn't needed
- New building blocks for agents: compute sandboxes, gateways, and agent-specific permissions distinct from human or service roles
Related event: AWS CEO on Rebuilding Cloud for Agents: $220B CapEx, 2 Million GPUs in 2026(3 posts)→
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