Tokenomics
AI is changing how leaders must think about the true cost of technology with rapid competition among foundation models, shifting API pricing and debates around open-weight vs. proprietary architectures. Determining your actual ROI can feel like trying to hit a moving target.
Join Nick Jenkins, AI Specialist at Google Cloud, for a pragmatic and hype-free breakdown of the economics of AI. Discover how to cut through the noise, optimise model spending and build a sustainable AI strategy. In this session we’ll demystify Tokenomics and move beyond simple token pricing to focus on the metric that matters most: Cost Per Task Achieved.
Whether you’re evaluating frontier models, deploying open-weight solutions or looking to cut model expenditure by up to 80% with smart optimisation strategies, this session will provide you with a concrete framework to plan, budget and confidently scale AI across your organisation.
What to expect:
The core metric: Why Cost Per Task Achieved matters more than raw token pricing.
Deployment trade-offs: Comparing public APIs, cloud-hosted open-weights and self-hosted models.
Smart cost optimisation: Slash spend by up to 80% using model ensembling, context caching and prompt engineering.
Strategic guardrails: Setting FinOps limits, knowing when traditional ML beats GenAI and ethical considerations.
Details:
Date: Thursday 15th October 2026
Time: 13:30 pm – 14:45 pm
Location: Stone & Chalk - Level 1, 477 Pitt Street, Haymarket, Sydney
We look forward to seeing you there!
To see the rest of the Ascend'26 events head to ascend26.com.au