Taming Token Town: Staying Flexible as Models Get Pricier

About this session

The token market is the Wild West, and if you’re building on frontier models, your pricing and margins can change overnight without warning.As frontier labs raise prices, deprecate “good enough” models, and move up the stack into first-party products, applied AI companies are increasingly buying from suppliers who may also become their competitors. That makes compute procurement, model optionality, and open-weight strategy not just an ops problem, but a core product strategy decision.At this talk, you’ll learn how to think about AI cost as *cost per task* (not cost per token), how to preserve leverage in negotiations by maintaining real optionality across providers, and where open-weight models can create immediate cost relief and long-term pricing pressure. You’ll also leave with concrete tactics for building value beyond tokens through architecture, orchestration, and durable product moats.Come for a behind-the-scenes buyer’s view of frontier pricing, and leave with a playbook to protect flexibility, margins, and customer trust as the AI market evolves.