Advances in AI Capabilities to Outpace Cost Savings
CIO Dive, Monday, August 17th, 2026
Gartner projects AI inference costs rising fivefold by 2028 even as per-token prices fall.
Gartner reports that while individual tokens grow cheaper, enterprise reliance on increasingly complex AI workflows will drive overall spending sharply higher.
Agentic systems consume far more tokens than simple chatbots, producing what analysts call the Inference Paradox. Nearly half of organizations report AI budget surprises escalated to their boards.
CIOs are advised to evaluate carefully whether AI is the cost-effective answer to mission-critical problems.