A low tokenThe chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.Full definition → price can still produce an expensive AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → run. Artificial Analysis' Solar Mini 4 evaluation found that repeated input dominated the cost of Upstage's model. In multistep tasks, the growing conversation is sent back to the model repeatedly, making the share served from cache consequential.
The report separates that billing effect from speed: heavy output-token use extended task duration despite fast token generation. Those are different bottlenecks. Comparing sticker prices or tokens per second alone misses how a particular agent workload uses the model; cache behavior, conversation length and total generated output determine more of the practical result.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
token — The chunk of text a model reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word — and the unit AI usage is billed in.
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
reasoning model — A model trained to think — generating extended internal reasoning before answering — trading time and tokens for accuracy on hard problems.
context window — The maximum amount of text a model can consider at once — its working memory for the current conversation or task.
