Why it matters
Spend discipline and model discipline keep getting confused. A frontier-only rule looks like governance but removes the largest cost lever most teams have, which is sending cheap work to cheap models.
Tokenmaxxing read
774 billion tokens for an estimated $4.5M lands near $5.80 per million, a blended frontier rate. Send a third of that volume to mid-tier models and the same month costs seven figures less. Frontier-only is a budget choice wearing a quality costume.
Source takeaway
Secondhand from the Journal's CIO column and thin on method: the $4.5M is an estimate, not an invoice. Read the Shopify and Olive lines as posture, and pull the WSJ original before quoting either figure.
