ARK Invest analyzed the AI inference market and found a dramatic drop in token prices, falling from $2.07 to $1.02 per million tokens, a decline of more than 50%. OpenAI initiated a new round of price cuts in late July 2026, including an 80% reduction for the GPT-5.6 Luna model. This price war is driven by competitive pressure from players like Anthropic and xAI, which are also offering aggressive pricing. Paradoxically, this price compression coincides with an exponential surge in transaction volumes, with a 10x increase in certain use cases. ARK Invest is betting that this volume growth can offset margin compression, provided competitive pressure continues.
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