By Hugh Langley
Publication Date: 2026-05-29 09:00:00
While Anthropic hypes its unreleased Mythos AI model as dangerously powerful, Google is changing the conversation — to cost and speed.
Google says its latest Gemini 3.5 Flash model rivals frontier offerings, while saving money for companies that are racking up huge bills by churning through billions of tokens, the core unit of AI usage.
“Companies are already blowing through their annual token budgets and it’s only May,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said recently. “If companies used a mix of Flash and other frontier models they could save a lot of money.”
The timing of Google’s new model is no coincidence. As companies embrace token-hungry AI agents they’re also paying closer attention to their bills. Meanwhile, smaller AI companies under pressure to generate revenue are cranking up the cost of their products, pushing customers to reconsider their AI spend.
That presents an opportunity to win on value rather than raw capability. It’s also where…
