NORTH AMERICA
technology · international · severity 6
AI model pricing and deployment strategies diverging among major vendors
Google released Gemini 3.5 Flash at 3-6x higher pricing than predecessors, while OpenAI offers $2M token investments to Y Combinator startups in exchange for equity. China's Sberbank plans Chinese chip use for GigaChat AI amid sanctions. These moves show vendors competing on price, incentives, and geopolitical supply chain strategies as AI commoditizes.
Sources
- Sam Altman says OpenAI offered to invest $2M in tokens in each startup in the current YC batch; a source says the offer is in exchange for equity via SAFE (Jemima McEvoy/The Information)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash costs $1.50 per 1M input tokens and $9 per 1M output tokens, 3x the price of Gemini 3 Flash Preview and 6x the price of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)
- Russia's Sberbank says it hopes to use Chinese chips to power its flagship GigaChat AI model, as sanctions continue to block the country's access to hardware (Reuters)
- Document and sources: China banned Nvidia's RTX 5090D V2 chip, aimed at gamers and animators, while Jensen Huang was visiting China with Donald Trump last week (Financial Times)
- Trump’s H-1B visa squeeze paves way for Indian tech exodus