Token Economics: Why Cost Kills More AI Projects Than Hallucinations

Token costs have overtaken hallucinations as the top reason enterprise AI projects die before reaching production; it’s cited by 29% of technical leaders as the primary production killer, ahead of every reliability failure combined. The teams seeing success don't treat inference cost as an after-the-fact line item. They architect for token costs from the beginning.

This event examines what that shift actually looks like in practice: GPU memory and data architecture decisions that determine cost per token served and the orchestration choices that separate a project that survives its second budget review from one that doesn't.

We'll open with new VentureBeat Pulse Research on how enterprises are — and aren't — measuring the economics of the AI they're already running.

This isn't a panel. It's a small group of peers, over drinks, working through the hardest question in enterprise AI right now.

Featured Speakers:

An evening conversation and drinks with a small number of enterprise AI leaders, kept intentionally close to keep the conversation substantive.