GoKawiilPalo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora warned that token costs need to drop as much as 90% to promote large-scale artificial intelligence adoption.
"I think 54% is a good start," Arora told CNBC's Seema Mody on "Squawk on the Street" Thursday, after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC that the frontier lab's latest model is 54% more token-efficient for agentic coding. "I think we probably need another turn at it."
Arora said token efficiency needs to drop to as much as 20% over the next twelve months, and 90% by the following year.
Rising token costs have emerged as a major pain point for businesses and put a strain on AI budgets. The current pricing, he said, makes AI tools increasingly difficult for businesses to implement.
"We need to see the pricing for AI come down," Arora said.
Arora is among a growing group of executives pushing for a decline in token pricing. The worry is that high token costs create a major barrier to widespread adoption, preventing many enterprises from using the tools.