An analysis republished by 36Kr (originally from 窄播AI) says that as per-million-token prices keep falling, model vendors are separately pricing speed, resource priority and budget certainty. It cites OpenAI's July moves — cutting GPT-5.6 Luna API input and output prices by 80% and mid-tier Terra by 20% — while selling a Fast Mode for GPT-5.6 Sol at twice the standard price for up to 2.5x the output speed, and an early-October update that raised GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol speeds by about 50%. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar is cited proposing "Useful Intelligence per Dollar," arguing enterprises should count task completion, time spent, retries and human supervision rather than token list prices. The piece cites Ramp data showing effective price per million tokens for its US business sample fell from $1.15 to $0.68 (41%) between March and September 2026 while monthly token spending grew 20x from June 2025 to June 2026, and SemiAnalysis subscription-quota tests estimating that, assuming a 92% API gross margin and fully used quotas, exhausting Opus 5.5 quota implies roughly -369% subscription gross margin versus about 1% for Fable 5.1.