To recoup costs, these firms sell premium tiers with advanced features, while third‑party vendors build specialised AI agent services on top of the same models. Costs are tied to token usage, but consumption is hard to predict. In agentic systems, where multiple AI agents collaborate to make decisions and take actions, token use multiplies and becomes even less predictable. Goldman Sachs forecasts that monthly token use could rise 24‑fold between 2026 and 2030, reaching 120 quadrillion tokens as companies shift to AI agents. Passing costs to customersFor software vendors embedding AI into products, costs can balloon quickly as tokens are needed for development, testing, security and guardrails.