Cheaper Tokens, Bigger Bills

YPO Technology Network AI Brief · Jun 22, 2026 · 8m

The strategic AI question is no longer "which model do we use." It's "where does the model run, and who pays for the tokens." This week the AI inference startup Baseten raised roughly $1.5 billion at up to a $13 billion valuation for the unglamorous business of running other companies' models. Meanwhile token prices are collapsing about 10x a year, and enterprise AI bills are going up anyway.

In this episode, Stephen Forte unpacks the inference economy and what it means for your business:

The inference gold rush — why investors value the company that runs models more than many that build…