Cheaper AI Models Won't Fix Your Token Problem

DeepSeek slashed prices on its V4-Pro model by 75%, but enterprise AI vendors are finding little relief. Agent systems consume tokens at a rate that outpaces falling inference costs, eroding any margin gains. Unlike simple chatbots that make one model call per query, AI agents trigger chains of planning, retrieval, tool use, and verification. The user sees one answer, but vendors absorb the cost of dozens of calls, making cheaper models an insufficient fix for a fundamentally different cost structure.