Would you pay $1000/month for your agents? | TWiAI E38

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Today’s show:

Grok Bot users maxed out their weekly limits over Halloween Weekend, and SpaceX now says that serving compute to all Bot-heads is financially unsustainable. So how much does AI have to cost for the math to actually line up? And is there anyone actually willing to pay?

Jason says he’d spend about $1000/month for his personal bots, and the panel mostly aligns. (One outlier? Code Metal CEO Peter Morales, who just had a fight with his CTO over dropping $100K in tokens in just a few weeks.)

On TWiAI Ep 38, our expert panel showcases their favorite recent AI builds and designs, plus breaks down more of the week’s biggest AI news and trends, including the chip stock selloff and debt squeeze on neoclouds, the AI advancements that are making mathematicians cry, and where LLMs actually get their news updates about major elections.

Guests

Peter Morales on X: https://x.com/PeterMoralesX

Code Metal: https://www.codemetal.ai/

Nick Harris on X: https://x.com/theanalognick

Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.com/

Mark Jeffrey on X: https://x.com/markjeffrey

Stillcore Capital: https://stillcorecapital.com/

Relevant Links

Elon Musk throttles Grok Bot limits over "unsustainably high" costs (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/elon-musk-throttles-grok-bot-limits-due-to-unsustainably-high-costs/

Elon's post on Grok Bot costs: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2116992258520064397

Goldman Sachs pulls AI coding tools from traders and bankers (The Decoder): https://the-decoder.com/goldman-sachs-pulls-ai-coding-tools-from-traders-and-bankers/

Garry Tan spends up to $200K a year on tokens (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/y-combinators-garry-tan-uses-ai-agents-so-much-he-spends-up-to-200k-a-year-on-tokens/

Jason's post: "< $40k a year on tokens… getting $2m+ in value": https://x.com/Jason/status/2117126320962351277

Lovable: https://lovable.dev

Notion: https://www.notion.com

ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io

Bittensor: https://bittensor.com

Tao Bubbles: https://taobubbles.net/

Engy (subnet 53): https://subnetalpha.ai/subnet/engy/

Athena, Jason's assistant service: https://athenawow.com

Jason's "Unsponsored" Chrome extension for Amazon: https://x.com/Jason/status/2116380861167714594

Sam Altman hates local AI models (Futurism): https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-hates-local-ai-models-computers

Steven Strogatz on The Daily, "When A.I. Comes for Your Purpose in Life" (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/podcasts/the-daily/mathematicians-problem-ai-jobs.html

Abbott halts data center approvals until audits are done (NBC DFW): https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/data-center-approvals-in-texas-halted-until-audits-completed-gov-greg-abbott-says/4058445/

How an obscure website became a force in America's election information machine (Washington Post): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/10/30/how-an-obscure-website-became-force-americas-election-information-machine

Google restricts Gemini from answering 2024 election questions (Quartz): https://qz.com/goggle-gemini-ai-chatbot-india-us-election-1851330306

Timestamps:

1:16 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co

3:00 How much should a company spend on AI?

8:40 Engy, Lium, and the road to cheaper inference

14:57 So what's the most you'd pay per month for your agents?

22:06 How unmetered inference changes the way you work

25:33 AI Agent Show & Tell

38:57 Chip stocks sink, lenders pull back from neoclouds

45:02 Dreaming of an agentic Christmas

49:46 Sam Altman hates that you have DRAM

55:01 Leaving math and science's Age of Heroes

1:04:23 Where do the LLMs get election info?

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