---
title: Every token your AI generates has a price tag. Three, actually.
type: post
date: 2026-05-12
source: linkedin
original_url: "https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A7459914860768944128"
topics: ["green-software", "ai"]
summary: Every token your AI generates has a price tag. Three, actually. There is the bill — from your model provider, your hyperscaler, or your own inference infrastructure. There is the energy drawn from the grid to produce it. And there is the carbon released into…
draft: false
---

Every token your AI generates has a price tag. Three, actually.

There is the bill — from your model provider, your hyperscaler, or your own inference infrastructure. There is the energy drawn from the grid to produce it. And there is the carbon released into the atmosphere because of it.

For a long time, the assumption was that engineering teams had at least the first one under control. The age of agents has dismantled that assumption.

In the latest edition of Technology Bytes, I unpack why token economics is breaking — and why the answer is not a smaller AI bill, but a different way of thinking about AI altogether.

The next decade of AI will not be won by whoever spends the most on compute. It will be won by whoever wastes the least.

Read the full edition 👇  
#GreenSoftware #SustainableAI #TokenEconomics #TechnologyLeadership #AI Green Software Foundation