India, Aug. 12 -- The cost of using AI is falling rapidly, with the price of processing a million tokens dropping by roughly 10X every year. The new price benchmark is being set across the market: DeepSeek V4 Flash charges $0.14 per Mn input tokens, OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna costs $0.20, while Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 is priced at $1.25 for the same volume.

On the surface, this looks like a simple equation: cheaper intelligence should mean more AI. But inside enterprises, the conversation is moving in a different direction.

As the cost of inference falls, the bigger question is no longer how much AI companies can afford to use, but where they should use it, and whether the returns justify the spend.

Tech leaders are increasingly looking beyon...