OpenAI and Anthropic are going public while still capturing much of the money spent on foundation-model usage. But deployment patterns are starting to tell a more complicated story. Companies are building hybrid model portfolios, using proprietary models where convenience, support, and frontier capability matter, while turning to open-weights models where cost, privacy, customization, and deploymentContinue reading “The Hybrid AI Stack Is Coming for the Pricing Power of OpenAI and Anthropic”
Author Archives: Ben Lorica
Your AI bill is a tax on scale
Subscribe • Previous Issues The Hybrid AI Stack Is Coming for the Pricing Power of OpenAI and Anthropic OpenAI and Anthropic are going public while still capturing much of the money spent on foundation-model usage. But deployment patterns are starting to tell a more complicated story. Companies are building hybrid model portfolios, using proprietary models where convenience,Continue reading “Your AI bill is a tax on scale”
Tokenomics: AI’s New Design Constraint
The Cost Reality of Running AI at Scale Budget shock is already happening. Multiple major players have pulled back on AI features or subscriptions due to unexpectedly high token costs. Amazon removed its token leaderboard and Microsoft cancelled Claude Code subscriptions. These are early signals that the deploy-everywhere approach is hitting hard financial limits, notContinue reading “Tokenomics: AI’s New Design Constraint”
The Gap Between the Press Release and the Power Grid
Back in February, I wrote about what I called the “Data Center Rebellion,” the growing local resistance to the physical infrastructure behind AI. Since then, I have been asking tech people around the Bay Area how closely they are following the backlash. The answer is usually: they know it exists, but not much more thanContinue reading “The Gap Between the Press Release and the Power Grid”
12 GW announced. 5 GW under construction. What happens next?
Subscribe • Previous Issues The Gap Between the Press Release and the Power Grid Back in February, I wrote about what I called the “Data Center Rebellion,” the growing local resistance to the physical infrastructure behind AI. Since then, I have been asking tech people around the Bay Area how closely they are following the backlash. TheContinue reading “12 GW announced. 5 GW under construction. What happens next?”
Your Enterprise Data Deserves Better Than a Chatbot
Large language models and their multimodal variants remain the foundation models most people encounter first. That makes sense. Text, images, audio, and video cover a huge range of knowledge-work tasks, and today’s chatbots are far more capable than the text-only systems many people first tried. But enterprise AI does not run on chat alone. ItContinue reading “Your Enterprise Data Deserves Better Than a Chatbot”
The smartest AI teams are moving past chatbots
Subscribe • Previous Issues Your Enterprise Data Deserves Better Than a Chatbot Large language models and their multimodal variants remain the foundation models most people encounter first. That makes sense. Text, images, audio, and video cover a huge range of knowledge-work tasks, and today’s chatbots are far more capable than the text-only systems many people first tried.Continue reading “The smartest AI teams are moving past chatbots”
Beyond the Demo: What Real AI Agents Actually Do at Work
I am always on the lookout for new AI agents and applications that operate outside the coding world. By agent, I mean a system that can take a goal, use tools, keep context, and work through several steps rather than simply answer a prompt. Looking through my notes from the recent AI Agent Conference, IContinue reading “Beyond the Demo: What Real AI Agents Actually Do at Work”
What Upwork, DoorDash, Meta, EY, and Fundrise reveal about agents
Subscribe • Previous Issues Beyond the Demo: What Real AI Agents Actually Do at Work I am always on the lookout for new AI agents and applications that operate outside the coding world. By agent, I mean a system that can take a goal, use tools, keep context, and work through several steps rather than simply answerContinue reading “What Upwork, DoorDash, Meta, EY, and Fundrise reveal about agents”
The Vatican’s AI Principles: What You Need to Know
The Vatican’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, introduces a moral framework that challenges how technology leaders evaluate artificial intelligence. It treats AI as a test of human priorities. Its central question is not whether AI can make institutions faster, cheaper, or more scalable. The question is whether it helps people live with more dignity, freedom, responsibility,Continue reading “The Vatican’s AI Principles: What You Need to Know”