Tokenomics 2: Electric Boogaloo 😉😂

Last week, we looked at Tokenomics and the exciting upcoming decline in token prices, which is expected to lead to continued AI adoption and AI revenue (and even margin expansion) for AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Tokenomics: The Economy Of AI Part 1 Today, we’re answering the question that a lot of investors have about the incredible amount of AI spending. OK, the math seems logical, but aren’t All Models Wrong? Kudos to anyone who remembered one of the smartest quotes to ever be uttered by a British Statistician😉 Source: Business Insider, Chat GPT 5.5 Pro OK, so Blackwell is able to generate 1 mega token (1 million tokens) for just $0.12, 35X cheaper than Hopper. And it’s 65X faster at generating tokens AND most importantly for companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, where power is the single biggest constraint, the same 1 Megawatt can now generate 50X more tokens. That is the supply growth that Jensen and his team of delightful engineering nerds have created. BUT what evidence is there that all the extra capacity can be soaked up!? I mean, if we’re about to crank up the supply of tokens by 50X, then even in the age of AI agents and power users, what if we saturate demand!? Source: The Information, SEC filings, Chat GPT 5.5 The RPO backlog is the contracted revenue backlog that hyperscalers have secured for their AI data centers and cloud businesses. “OK but isn’t like 50% of that backlog Anthropic and OpenAI?! The unprofitable companies that, if they grow their way into bankruptcy, could disappear and thus take half of the RPO backlog with them?” Yes indeed, about 50% of the RPO backlog is from Anthropic (profitable in Q2 for the first time but still negative on an FCF basis) and OpenAI, which is expected to lose $212 billion before becoming profitable in 2030. Source: Gemini So remember first principles investing. If Anthropic and OpenAI are 50% of the RPO backlog (which is growing at 185%, 2X as fast as capex spending), then let’s analyze the health of those companies (as best as we can before the S1 forms come out). Source: X Almost 5% of the top retailer sales are now coming from AI recs, and that is growing at 145% to 315% CAGR So 5% of the top 5 retailers are now AI, but when would that reach 50% at current growth rates? Source: Sensor Tower, Chat GPT 5.5 How We Know Anthropic And OpenAI Are (Likely) Healthy OK, so companies pay OpenAI and Anthropic for their API tokens (the power users), though OpenAI also has 54 million paying members (5.4% of total users). Those 50 million paying members (and 4 million Pro) are generating $1.8 billion per month in revenue = $17.28 billion per year out of $25 billion ARR, so the subscription business is super important to OpenAI for now, while Anthropic, the coding-focused company, is where the enterprise dollars are the key growth driver. BUT given that OpenAI’s paying subs have been relatively stable over time, let’s focus on the Enterprise clients, because this is the most important thing for both Anthropic and OpenAI. A $17.3 billion ARR business that is growing at a very modest rate is not going to get OpenAI to profitability. Advertising MIGHT help a bit, but it’s going to be enterprise API revenue that makes OpenAI profitable (or the lack of it that will kill the company). So this brings us to Ramp Capital, the most important enterprise SAAS company that no one has ever heard of. Ramp Capital: The Way We Track Real AI Spend By Enterprise Customers