General
For AI tech investors, I think this is the most important metric to watch in 2026
"tokens per watt per dollar"... this metric will determine where the state of AI investing goes in 2026.
Models used to be trained with as much data as possible. But the landscape has shifted.
Now, the Street is expecting real cash flows for these models.
We’ve officially entered the Inference Economy, where every token is currency, and GPUs are the mint.
"Tokens are essential to understand for one important reason: They are how people pay for AI working models, also known as reasoning or inference models. In working AI models, tokens are used for input queries as well as output intelligence of prediction, content generation and reasoning. Users can pay based on token use. For ChatGPT's GPT-5, text input queries are $1.25 per 1 million tokens. Output responses are $10 per 1 million tokens. Image and audio token prices are higher.
Tokens per watt is, therefore, an extremely useful metric showing how much "work" an IT system can produce for every watt of power consumed."
Just thought it was interesting!
Sources:
https://medium.com/@BuildShift/tokens-are-the-new-currency-inside-the-inference-economy-aff49373282a