Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper - [Invest Like the Best, EP.488]

You’re likely overpaying for AI right now. The market is obsessed with instant responses and real-time interaction, pushing up the price of compute. But for most of the operational work your team does by hand – the heavy lifting that takes hours or days – speed is not the main game. The real opportunity to cut costs and drive efficiency with AI comes from processing tasks in the background, where cost per token, not latency, is king.

This is the core argument from Neil Movva, founder of Sail, on the Invest Like the Best podcast. He’s building what he calls a “token factory” for a future where AI agents run in the background for extended periods. Movva states that in this world, "latency matters less and cost matters more," and his company is designed to drive token costs as low as possible. He even employs a “scavenger strategy” for hardware, challenging the idea that premium, cutting-edge chips are always the answer.