The frontier is expensive

Yesterday Apollo released a chart “Circularity in AI shows up in token spending too” which I learned about from these these two tweets

I see this chart a bit differently: - New companies are able to design their org/GTM from zero, and are adopting AI furiously - Enterprises have cultural, political and technical reasons to move much slower on AI adoption That’s pretty much it

— BuccoCapital Bloke (@buccocapital) October 23, 2026

And it’s got me thinking about token efficiency again. (That’s a lie, I’m always thinking about token efficiency.)

BuccoCapital is probably right AND it’s still a risk to the frontier labs if VC-funding starts to slow. Frontier tokens are expensive and if you’re not getting new funding you start looking for ways to manage expenses for profitable growth and/or you go out of business. Both have negative implications for the frontier labs.