The Agentic AI Era:
Tokens Are the New Oil, NeoClouds Are the New Refineries

Presented byVESSL AI,Inc.

In the agentic AI era, the token — the smallest unit of AI work — is the defining commodity, like oil in the twentieth century. At GTC 2026, Jensen Huang framed it as Revenue = Tokens per Watt × Available Gigawatts. Inference spending now exceeds training, and data centers have become token factories.

Neoclouds are the refineries of this economy. McKinsey notes they emerged from structural GPU scarcity, offering flexible contracts and lower pricing than hyperscalers. They often deploy next-generation GPUs faster and tune networking fabrics specifically for AI workloads, differentiating on cost per token and hardware freshness.

Agentic AI amplifies demand — autonomous agents chain dozens of inference cycles per task, compounding token costs at scale. But bare-metal rental alone is fragile. The neoclouds that win will move up the stack into full AI platforms — delivering not just GPUs, but the lowest cost per token.