I don’t think I’ve discussed tokenization in the Bredemarket blog, but I’m sure you heard about it. Because when you’re rated on a metric, people rush to maximize the metric, with the result that one anonymous company spent a half billion dollars on generative AI tokens in a single month. Because spending tokens means you’re optimizing your company performance…right?
A chorus of CFOs said “wrong.”
But before these high-spending companies jettison AI altogether and turn to 1,000 low-cost workers instead, they may instead turn to low-cost algorithms.
“Companies are looking to better manage their use of AI after seeing the costs of the technology rise….
“This has created an opening for Chinese AI labs that are able to charge less than the U.S. companies due to their more efficient models and China’s lower energy costs….
“Chinese AI models now have greater token consumption than U.S. ones, which marks a change since the beginning of the year….”
We’ve already seen the efficiency and cost advantages of Chinese algorithms such as DeepSeek. But we’ve also seen the security concerns, including those that put TikTok’s future in limbo until it was sold.
This isn’t going to end well.
Bredemarket 