US companies have flipped from “tokenmaxxing” to “thrift-maxxing”, mixing cheaper Chinese models with OpenAI's and Anthropic's, threatening the labs' valuations

Companies big and small are mixing models and it's changing the economics and power players of the industry

Wall Street Journal 2026-07-27

Context & Ripple Effects

This is an escalation of the cost pressure reported in June, when companies were already turning to tools that accessed cheaper models as AI spending rose. The earlier shift toward lower-cost model options is now described as a broader purchasing strategy rather than an isolated workaround.

The move also extends a pattern seen among startups adopting open-weight Chinese models for cost and customization. For OpenAI and Anthropic, enterprise buyers’ ability to split workloads across providers makes the economics of premium model access more consequential.

First-order effects

US companies can route price-sensitive workloads to cheaper Chinese models while retaining OpenAI and Anthropic for tasks where they see a reason to pay for them.
OpenAI and Anthropic face more immediate pressure on usage revenue and on the valuation assumptions tied to sustained demand for premium models.

Second-order effects

Model buyers gain leverage in negotiations because they can substitute among providers rather than standardize on a single frontier lab.
Frontier labs are pushed to demonstrate clearer performance or product differentiation relative to lower-cost alternatives, while Chinese-model providers gain a larger opening in US enterprise workflows.

Third-order effects

If multi-model procurement persists, model access may become a segmented market: premium systems for selected workloads and lower-cost or open-weight systems for volume use, weakening the assumption that frontier capability alone secures broad enterprise spend.
The resulting buyer power could constrain the revenue concentration needed to support frontier-lab valuations, though policy restrictions on Chinese models remain a material counterforce, as shown by the US policy fight over open-weight models.

The trend: Enterprise AI is shifting from maximizing model consumption to portfolio-based model sourcing, with cost and substitutability increasingly shaping frontier-lab economics.

Discussion

@kevin2kelly Kevin Kelly on x
Tokenomics are taking hold. The cost of AI will make a huge difference, diverting use to lower cost, less powerful, but good enough models. Leading edge may be a liability. https://www.wsj.com/...
@jeffreyleefunk Jeffrey Lee Funk on x
American companies have concluded they don't have to blow their budgets on AI. Fed up with ballooning costs, they are starting to use lower-priced models, including some built in China, meaning America's hyperscalers have built too many data centers. https://www.wsj.com/...
@marinadgal Marina on x
Mixing models and facing them against each other in your own little arena while running your own evals is pure joy
@ajtweet Alexander Jacobson on x
Slightly mistitled. Article shows how clever use of many different models together, each for a different part of a problem, can optimize costs. https://www.wsj.com/...
@katiemiller Katie Miller on x
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@wsj @wsj on x
Companies big and small are mixing models, and it's changing the economics and power players of the industry. https://www.wsj.com/...
@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
This is where most companies will end up. Use frontier models for tasks that require …
Kevin Heald Kevin Heald on linkedin
The shifting AI landscape mentioned in this WSJ piece—where companies are optimizing costs by smartly routing tasks across different model tiers—feels like deja vu. …
Eric James Eric James on linkedin
I read a fantastic WSJ article highlighting model discernment, and I'll summarize with two excerpts: …
Freya Petersen Freya Petersen on linkedin
In this weekend's paper, The Wall Street Journal covers the inflection point reverberating through the wider AI industry as companies move past tokenmaxxing …
@malwarejake Jake Williams on bluesky
Two notes: — 1. A lot of this is testing. If a tool can't consistently automate routine tasks, it shouldn't be depended upon for anything else. — 2. Until very recently, that's all they could reliably accomplish. — I've seen a lot of this at my clients. [embedded post]
@erikahall Erika Hall on bluesky
This has been the stupidest technology cycle in my adult life. — Somehow stupider than NFTs because so many people I thought were smart got roped into the hype. — www.wsj.com/business/chi...
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on bluesky
More details on the death of tokenmaxxing and the rise of tokenminning below — www.wsj.com/business/chi...
@carlquintanilla Carl Quintanilla on bluesky
“.. “It's like driving a Lamborghini to go to the grocery store to pick up milk when that was designed to be raced around a track,” he said in an interview. — @wsj.com — www.wsj.com/business/chi... [image]
@dannygroner Danny Groner on bluesky
“Being economical—or tokenomical—is a dramatic reversal in mindset. Just months ago, it was a badge of honor to be using AI so much that you spent a lot on tokens. Companies rewarded employees for tokenmaxxing, flashing leaderboards that showed who had spent the most. Now they…
@jessefelder.com Jesse Felder on bluesky
“There's zero loyalty that I'm seeing,” says Marty Kausas, chief executive of Pylon, an AI customer support platform. “It really feels like a bloodbath right now.” www.wsj.com/business/chi...
r/NoFilterNews r on reddit
Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AI
@superguenter Tobi Knaup on x
I've seen this story before. Kubernetes disrupted the company I co-founded. It won by becoming the neutral substrate that engineers, cloud providers and vendors all built on. Open-weight AI is approaching the same point. A thread.
@jchengwsj Jonathan Cheng on x
@george_chen The end result could be a market that looks like Android and iOS, says @kevinsxu: “What I envision three years from now is that OpenAI and Anthropic will still make the most money and then you have a bunch of open models...a lot of them coming from China.” https://ww…
@jchengwsj Jonathan Cheng on x
FT: US “closed models”, which include products offered by OpenAI and Anthropic, were too expensive for most consumers in global south countries. “So China has suddenly provided a very good Plan B, maybe even better than the Plan A,” @george_chen said. https://www.ft.com/...
@kennedycsis Scott Kennedy on x
A lot easier for China to build “an alternative global order to that of the US-led west” when the US has undermined the order it had built & is putting as much pressure - or more - on allies & others as it is on China. https://www.ft.com/... via @ft
@jensenhuang Jensen Huang on x
For my first post, I'm sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter. AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country. Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty. Th…
@mononofu Julian Schrittwieser on x
@satyanadella funny to see people jump to the conclusion I must want to ban open weight models.. I actually think open models can be very useful! But it's interesting how some historically extremely anti-open source companies are suddenly all in favor of openness 🤔
@davidsacks David Sacks on x
The entire tech industry (save for Anthropic) has come out in favor of open source AI. So what happens next? Will Anthropic change its lobbying efforts? Not likely. Now the gaslighting begins: “Nobody is trying to ban open source.” “We just want to limit who can use it.” “W…
@packym Packy McCormick on x
I will say, it would have been easy for Anthropic to just sign the letter and then lobby behind the scenes and I respect that they didn't. They believe something and they're sticking to it even when costly.
@vkoganpolisci Vladimir Kogan on x
Classic Bootleggers and Baptists! OpenAI and Anthropic want to do to Chinese open-source AI models what Detroit did to Chinese electric cars. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@emollick Ethan Mollick on x
I think most people, when talking about open weights models, don't deeply believe in the vision of AGI/ASI that lab insiders believe in. Like they don't expect AI to really present grave semi-autonomous biosecurity or other similar risks. Whether it is right or not, no one knows,
@tszzl Roon on x
@woke8yearold yep - there is no way to hold a consistent belief set where you're agi pilled and pro open source and this has been obvious since ilya wrote this 2015 or whatever. enormous cope ensues
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
AMD has also signed! [image]
@tszzl Roon on x
if we could coordinate a global capabilities slowdown today i would likely press that magic button
@mattzeitlin Matthew Zeitlin on x
Oh so innovation being driven by quasi monopoly returns accruing to companies run by their founders is bad now? I thought we had all read Zero to One?
@angelbrodin Angel on x
this is the dumbest take i've seen all week, on par with ppl who say “if you care about homelessness then let them live in your house.” just an incredibly dumb purity test it's not too late to delete this my man
@packym Packy McCormick on x
Anthropic is an ideologically captured organization seeking regulatory capture to protect both their business and their ideology. [image]
@mononofu Julian Schrittwieser on x
I'm so excited that @JensenHuang is a believer in open source now, looking forward to the CUDA and GPU driver open source release!
@thestalwart Joe Weisenthal on x
Yesterday they were signing open letters. Today they are yelling at people to “read the room. VCs have recreated BlueSky-politics from first principles.
@sundarpichai Sundar Pichai on x
Very happy to support this on behalf of Google. We have long benefited from open source, are big contributors to open source and in fact have consistently made open weights models with Gemma available from @GoogleDeepMind @demishassabis . Onwards!
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
the way this is playing out: the part of the industry that is conflicted on open source realizes it is better to all align against anthropic and box them out tons of frenemies against a common antagonist, and what better way to sway valley sentiment than say “hooray open source”
@thestalwart Joe Weisenthal on x
It's funny that this whole fracas kicked off because there was one eval which said that Kimi3 was near-frontier at frontend design work (probably one of the least important metrics tbh).
@davidsacks David Sacks on x
Nobody is saying that all software has to be open source. What they're saying is that open-weight AI should be allowed. By implication, they're rejecting your company's incessant machinations to kneecap the open model ecosystem. Read the room.
@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
NYTimes: “OpenAI and Anthropic have lobbied regulators in Washington to restrict open-source A.I. models …
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
google spent the week fence sitting until this morning, now looks like they too want to be seen as pro open source now that everyone else signed the jensen letter
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
here's a story about the “open vs closed” debate over the past few weeks in the tech industry and how, depending on who you ask, the global economy and national security could be at stake w/ @kateconger @AnaSwanson and meaghan tobin https://www.nytimes.com/...
@bgurley Bill Gurley on x
Excited to see Anthropic acknowledge the real problem with open is it competes with their corporate economic strategy. The “awareness” here is revealing. When you build the biggest private market cap ever, you should expect competition. I'm sure the secondaries have been nice.
@satyanadella Satya Nadella on x
Open-weight models are essential to a healthy AI ecosystem. Together with others across our industry, we are outlining a path for open-weight models to strengthen American competitiveness and expand economic opportunity, while protecting national security. https://www.microsoft.c…
@finkd Mark Zuckerberg on x
Open source is a positive and important force for both empowering people and preventing centralization. Proud to support this.
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on bluesky
Anthropic and OpenAI are creating a Streisand Effect where their ongoing attacks on open Chinese AI models lets everyone know those models are actually so good that they're worth checking out.
@wowbaggert @wowbaggert on bluesky
These guys both know that their customers are going to migrate to cheaper self hosted open models the second they try to charge them the actual cost of their opex. — This is rank anti-competitive maneuvering.
r/BetterOffline r on reddit
OpenAI and Anthropic quietly lobby Washington regulators to restrict open-source AI models, even as Sam Altman publicly says he supports open source AI
r/LocalLLaMA r on reddit
Sources: OpenAI and Anthropic quietly lobby Washington regulators to restrict open-source AI models, even as Sam Altman publicly says he supports open source AI
r/artificielle r on reddit
la guerre est déclarée entre partisans du closed et de l'open source
r/technology r on reddit
Nvidia and 24 other companies sign open-weights letter as Washington weighs Chinese AI model ban — OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google absent from the list

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