Big Technology Podcast
00:50:06 · Alex Kantrowitz
[00:50:06] S0: been No, just saying it was so long that they were just like, All right, you'll get exhausted and no one will pay it. Well, anyway, I think you're right that they have... It's been talked to death. All right, here's a risk factor for us to talk about before we leave today, which is the price... Know, we talked about a price war coming for LLMs and man has it happened. This is from Max Wolfe. OpenAI Anthropic cut their LLM prices by up to 80% within a few months. Why? I'll just read a little bit for Max. 07/30/2026, OpenAI announces that they're going to cut GPT 5.6 Luna by 80%. The price is 08/10/2026: Anthropic says their temporary Sonnet five price cut is permanent. 08/21/2026: OpenAI announces they are cutting the price of GPT-5.6 SOL by 20%. September 2026: OpenAI announced GPT-six SOL at a shocking price that halves the input and output price relative to the temporary discounted GPT-5.6 SOL. They simultaneously released GPT-six Luna also at half the input and output prices of the previous version. On the same exact day Anthropic announced Claude Opus 5.5 and the total cost reduction for that max calculates was 40 to 60% for a model that's even better than Fable five. Is not just a price war. Is not just the sorry, this is not the rumor of the price war. This is the price war. Some reasons for Max. He says, If you've been testing agents with new LLMs as they are released, it can be very difficult to differentiate them outside of subjective vibes. Since last November that launched the hypergrowth of Vagintic LLMs, the models have become more of a commodity, and it's now trivial to try a new model on your code base with just a toggle harness like OpenCode or using something like OpenRouter. As a result, there is little moat. That's just part of the reason that he gives. We talked a lot about the commoditization of LLMs and how that could lead to a price war. Is this it actually happening, Ranjan?
00:52:09 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:52:09] S1: I mean, it is... That... That's the other part again. Like, the the moment we're in in the next few months, we're already seeing the actual like cost. Yeah. I mean, we were... We've talked about the cost of compute. We've talked about the actual ability of them to charge, but also, I guess the... If the aggregate demand increases and everyone is identifying everything, this does become moot. And I think that's what they're gonna have to kinda pitch on the story. But I agree that this is... This doesn't help the overall business story that like say frontier models at high margin are going to be what differentiates them. And the main thing, I don't... I still don't like... Again, in the enterprise side of it, the number of people talking about or working on routing models across whatever the lowest cost best model is for the task is definitely increasing. So so I think it's still... It certainly presents a threat, but it hasn't affected them yet, it looks like. [00:53:09] S0: Another potential interesting reason is infrastructure. Here he writes this: Another less cynical factor that could explain the price cuts is that LLM infrastructure has improved over the past few months. When Anthropic said OPUS 5.5 requires less compute to serve than OPUS five and its pricing reflects that. I believe it. One outcome that would be genuinely ironic is that if these models are more compute efficient, it reduces the need for these massive data center build outs, which could cause cascading economic failures. Interesting. Your thoughts.
00:53:09 · Alex Kantrowitz, Ranjan Roy
[00:53:09] S0: Another potential interesting reason is infrastructure. Here he writes this: Another less cynical factor that could explain the price cuts is that LLM infrastructure has improved over the past few months. When Anthropic said OPUS 5.5 requires less compute to serve than OPUS five and its pricing reflects that. I believe it. One outcome that would be genuinely ironic is that if these models are more compute efficient, it reduces the need for these massive data center build outs, which could cause cascading economic failures. Interesting. Your thoughts. [00:53:41] S1: Yeah. I mean, it's a great point because right now, the... It feels like the... We just said the entire first part of this podcast was around big tech and data center investment. And like the economics of that, no one has any idea. And if it's... If everything becomes far more compute efficient, which it looks like it is becoming, that fundamentally changes the entire data center story. If the whole, again, the whole world gets identified, maybe it all works out but I think all of this is still, there's just so much risk and clearly the market with big technology firms has already recognized it but it is a bit terrifying, cascade economic failures.
00:53:41 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:53:41] S1: Yeah. I mean, it's a great point because right now, the... It feels like the... We just said the entire first part of this podcast was around big tech and data center investment. And like the economics of that, no one has any idea. And if it's... If everything becomes far more compute efficient, which it looks like it is becoming, that fundamentally changes the entire data center story. If the whole, again, the whole world gets identified, maybe it all works out but I think all of this is still, there's just so much risk and clearly the market with big technology firms has already recognized it but it is a bit terrifying, cascade economic failures. [00:54:26] S0: Don't like the sound of that at all. Mean the other, the final explanation is like the IPO was coming and they want to show usage increases, but like I know they also they really want to show revenue increases. So I don't know. Sometimes companies try to show real growth ahead of the IPO, but I don't think tokens is the growth that Wall Street carries. [00:54:46] S1: No, It's revenue and low costs and mask the true costs as much as possible in a GAAP compliant way. [00:54:54] S0: Okay. [00:54:55] S1: She's gotta do. [00:54:56] S0: Couple things before we leave. First of all, I love that you said Cheesecake Factory earlier in this episode because our SEO is now gonna be off the charts giving. [00:55:05] S1: But no one actually searches anymore, so it doesn't matter. [00:55:09] S0: Oh, that's true. Okay, you got me. You got me there. Do you want to spend a couple minutes on you can see everything?
00:55:09 · Alex Kantrowitz, Ranjan Roy
[00:55:09] S0: Oh, that's true. Okay, you got me. You got me there. Do you want to spend a couple minutes on you can see everything? [00:55:17] S1: I haven't seen it yet. I have not seen it yet, and I really wanna see it. I was like, I read... How do you say John Carreyrou? [00:55:27] S0: John Kerry. [00:55:27] S1: The book, Bad Blood? [00:55:29] S0: Yep. [00:55:29] S1: Carreyrou? Yes. Incredible. I was definitely a bit obsessed with the idea of Sunny Balwani back in the day and the whole Theranos story. [00:55:37] S0: I agree. Why Sunny Balwani? [00:55:39] S1: I... He was the most fascinating character in the entire story to me just because, like, he was mysterious. There's almost nothing on the Internet about him even though he was a cofounder of the company. And I don't know, just their relationship, it was just so weird and odd. So I I still am... I think Sunny Sunny... The evil of Sunny is not commonly recognized. Is he in the movie? [00:56:07] S0: He's not in the movie. I I won't do any spoilers. [00:56:09] S1: Alright. [00:56:10] S0: But We I... It's know It's a crazy one. I have to say it is a crazy one. I enjoyed it very much. [00:56:17] S1: Is... Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge you explain what makes it so good without spoiling. Go.
00:56:17 · Ranjan Roy, Alex Kantrowitz
[00:56:17] S1: Is... Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge you explain what makes it so good without spoiling. Go. [00:56:25] S0: Well, if you have watched anything from Nathan Fielder, you just know that the guy's mind works differently. And part of it is him and them trying to figure out why they brought him in in specific. Then, of course, he takes it on Nathan Fielder style divergences from the main story. I don't know. Just really... I quite enjoyed it. I'll say this: It's the least absurd of anything Nathan Fielder has ever made. [00:56:55] S1: It's crazy. That's, like, what makes [00:56:57] S0: it truly [00:57:01] S1: different or why everyone's reacting so strongly in some Also, like, way that [00:57:05] S0: Yeah. Well, another thing is that Elizabeth Holmes is this... She is... This... I'll try... Really, it's hard for me to say much more than this without spoiling it. But she is, by her own doing or by society's and probably a little bit both, a media creation, right? And how often do you get to see someone who is a media caricature effectively, basically, with given complete access to cameras, even with the weird [00:57:35] S1: Alright. I gotta I gotta... I have not been able to [00:57:38] S0: That's interesting to me. [00:57:39] S1: Convince my wife and Amazon obsessed seven year old son to go watch Nathan Fielder yet, but [00:57:47] S0: I know you texted me big techno... We should do a big technology private showing of the movie. We really should have. That's that's my... That's on me.