AI economics: rise of machines’ token use could work to advantage of Chinese models
Agentic AIs now use five times as many tokens as humans, giving lower-priced models from Chinese firms a competitive edge, analysts say
The global artificial intelligence boom recently crossed a landmark threshold: autonomous agents now consume more than five times as much data as human users, triggering a surge in processing costs that is giving lower-priced Chinese models a competitive edge, according to analysts.
Unlike traditional chatbots that simply respond to human prompts, these agents operate independently to execute multi-step workflows, such as writing software, conducting research or managing business operations.
A single assignment can trigger a cascade of automated model calls as an agent plans its task, searches databases, invokes software tools and audits its own results.
This shift has dramatically altered the economics of AI deployment. Agentic requests consumed about 15 times more tokens – the basic units of data processed by an AI model – than standard human queries, according to data from model aggregator OpenRouter compiled by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The data showed that daily token consumption from agentic workloads on OpenRouter hit 7.3 trillion in early August – 14 times the level six months earlier.
Agentic activity first surpassed human usage in February. By August, it accounted for over five times the 1.4 trillion tokens generated by human users on the platform.