What Happened to AI Token Prices? They Hit a Record Low, Halving from Their May Peak

[Financial News] AI token prices, which can be viewed as the cost of using AI models, have fallen to a record low.
The LLM Token Expenditure Index, an AI token price indicator calculated by U.S. market intelligence firm Silicon Data, stood at 97 cents per one million tokens on the 31st of last month (all dates and times hereafter are local time).
That was the lowest level since the index was created late last year. It was roughly half the late-May peak of $2.05.
The index generally continued to decline after June, with the downward trend becoming more pronounced this week.
CNBC noted that falling token prices could ease the cost burden for AI model users but could hurt model developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
The emergence of open-source models such as Kimi K3 from Chinese AI company Moonshot AI has been cited as one factor behind the recent price decline.
OpenAI's decision to cut prices for its ChatGPT-5.6 series models in late July also contributed to the overall decline in token prices.
The adoption of dynamic pricing, which allows other leading companies to adjust usage fees according to demand, also intensified downward pressure on prices.
Charles-Henri Montcho, chief investment officer at Seize Group, said in a post on the 1st, "Falling token prices put downward pressure on AI companies' revenue, while their computing input remains unchanged."
As a response, he argued, "Open-weight models now need only a few months to catch up with the performance of leading companies' models. Companies must therefore move away from their previous strategy of relying on performance advantages and focus on distribution, memory, and context to make it difficult for existing customers to switch."
Steve Hu, head of research at Silicon Data, analyzed the recent decline in token prices as suggesting that "sufficient performance for most tasks is already available," given the models offered by leading companies and their cheaper competitors.  


[email protected] International Affairs Reporter Lee Seok-woo Reporter