Think of AI intelligence like oil. A barrel of crude has a global price, and producers compete ruthlessly on cost. Now apply that logic to AI tokens, and you start to see why Chamath Palihapitiya is raising alarms about the economics underpinning the industry’s most celebrated companies.
On a recent episode of the All-In Podcast, Palihapitiya introduced a framework he calls a “barrel of intelligence,” defined as one million tokens. At OpenAI, that barrel costs about $26. At Anthropic, the price is roughly similar. At Chinese AI providers, it’s $0.50. That’s not a typo.
The price gap nobody wants to talk about
OpenAI and Anthropic sit at the premium end, charging around $26 per million tokens. xAI comes in at roughly $1 per barrel. Google prices similarly at about $1. Meta lands around $1.50. And Chinese providers undercut everyone at approximately $0.50.
In English: you could buy 52 barrels of Chinese AI intelligence for the cost of one barrel from OpenAI.
