Kevin Kelly: If Token Costs Become Crucial in the Future, China’s Open-Source Models Will Have a Significant Advantage

Odaily reported on July 18th that at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, renowned futurist and "godfather of Silicon Valley" Kevin Kelly stated in an interview that if one day everyone starts to care about token costs, the existence of open-source models would give China's AI an advantage.

Kevin Kelly mentioned that the cost of token consumption is becoming increasingly important, but currently, people don't seem to care much about it. "However, I believe that when we start consuming such a massive number of tokens all the time, everyone will become concerned (about the cost). If you can offer a cost that is only one-tenth of Anthropic's, it would completely disrupt the landscape." However, Kelly also cautioned that the open-source model needs sufficient funding to sustain operations, as it is not as profitable as the closed-source model. "Building these large models requires massive amounts of capital." (The Paper)