The great AI pricing reset is coming. Are you ready?

Per-token pricing has become the default commercial language of generative AI, and practically every budget conversation now happens in those terms (tokens consumed, tokens generated, cost per million tokens, etc., etc.). The problem is that this model treats every AI interaction as a discrete transaction, separate from the infrastructure required to process it. Yes, tokens are a billing unit, but the work they represent also has a physical footprint in memory and storage, and as agentic AI driv