Benedict Evans quote, Jul 9, 2026

Independent analyst · Jul 9, 2026 · Essay, Ways to think about token pricing

The narrow problem with that is that fiber construction was far ahead of demand, where AI compute construction is far behind demand, though, as above, we don’t know what that supply/demand balance will look like in the future.

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Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

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Jul 9, 2026	But at one extreme, there are two or three giant minds that run half of everything and have massive pricing power, and at the other extreme LLMs look like databases - there’ll be millions of them, some very big and some very small, and the value is in what you build on top - after all, every SaaS company is a ’database wrapper’.Jul 9, 2026· Essay	EssayWays to think about token pricing	Source
Jul 9, 2026	Even so, that brings me back to the same point: the current market dynamics point to a future in which, as today’s supply crunch eases, frontier models move towards becoming commodity infrastructure, with all of the value built on top, and for a different outcome, something needs to happen that we don’t see yet.Jul 9, 2026· Essay	EssayWays to think about token pricing	Source
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Date	Quote	Context	Source
Sep 22, 2026	If the top U.S. labs have to give up on what is supposed to be really important, they will look very “catchable.” The policy creates a big incentive for some other parts of the world to invest a lot more in compute.Tyler CowenSep 22, 2026· Post	PostBanning self-recursive improvement in AI models?	Source
Sep 21, 2026	A world with sufficient compute is one where intelligence is a commodity, and in commodity markets margin comes from a superior cost structure, which I would expect the leading model providers to have, in part because they have a meaningful lead in scaling and can apply superior AI to their infrastructure.Ben ThompsonSep 21, 2026· Post	PostFrontier Overhangs	Source
Sep 19, 2026	I have my doubts that the labs can afford to spend a constant portion of this compute on internal R&D as the total volume goes up, especially with plans to IPO, as they face increased scrutiny on basic economics.Nathan LambertSep 19, 2026· Post	PostWhy I still haven't bought into true RSI	Source
Sep 19, 2026	It is important to not confuse massive steps in inference-time scaling, a dynamic which should be fairly predictable, with being the outputs of RSI, which is highly uncertain.Nathan LambertSep 19, 2026· Post	PostWhy I still haven't bought into true RSI	Source
Sep 17, 2026	If you have five hours, you’re probably going to do a lot better. The AI models are pretty similar.Noam BrownSep 17, 2026· Interview	InterviewDwarkesh Podcast: Agent swarms, alignment, and recursive self-improvement	Source
Sep 10, 2026	But in my view, the net effect of the last decade of “Doomer” talk (Coxon appears to be a card-carrying member of that party) has been to make the Frontier AI companies wealthier and more powerful.Gary MarcusSep 10, 2026· Post	PostNo, Anderson Cooper, AI is not going to kill us all	Source

About this quote

Said by: Benedict Evans, Independent analyst
Where: Ways to think about token pricing
Topics: Compute, Investment
Source: ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/7/9/ways-to-think-about-token-pricing

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