Agents Just Passed Humans in Token Usage. And They Burn Far More Than Anyone Budgeted. A Deep Dive With OpenRouter’s COO
Summary
OpenRouter’s COO says agentic AI usage has now surpassed human usage and is driving far higher token consumption than most teams expected. The piece argues that agent workloads create a new cost model because tool calls, reasoning loops, and gateway definitions make each task much more expensive than a normal chat. It also shows that the same model can behave differently across providers because of the software layer between model weights and API responses. The article concludes that routing, failover, and tool-call success are now core infrastructure decisions for any company shipping agents.
Classifications
industries
Fintech & Banking
applications
Accounting and Taxes
AskAI Classifications
Labels
SaaS
CRM Software
Enterprise Software
Linked Companies
Salesforce
$1B+
OpenRouter
up to $1M