a16z: Agents burn 5x more tokens than humans, up 14x in six months
GregCook2011 · x · 2026-10-11
a16z's new report argues "your next users are machines": agents consume roughly 5x the tokens humans do, a figure up 14x in six months.
Aaron Levie added that agents spawning other agents, background agents, and agent swarms will use 1,000x more tokens than people prompting one at a time. He predicts AI-as-chatbot will look like a relic within a couple of years, with most tokens consumed by agents working continuously in the background — implying agent adoption is still very early and will require massive compute and infrastructure buildout.
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