Dell Reports 80 Percent Drop in AI Token Prices

Richard McLaughlin, president of Asia Pacific Japan & Greater China at Dell Technologies, announced at the Dell Technologies Forum 2026 that AI token prices have fallen 80 percent year-over-year. While costs have dropped, token usage for reasoning has increased 320-fold this year, with some engineering teams consuming a month's worth of tokens in less than two hours.

McLaughlin stated that organizations are shifting their focus from cost-per-token to a strategy Dell calls hybrid AI, which emphasizes running the right workload on the right model in the right place. He noted that the current economic shift is not a sign of failure, but rather that the technology is working as advertised.

To support these trends, Dell highlighted its AI Factory partnership with Nvidia, which is currently used by over 5,000 customers. Some of these clients report a 2.6 times return on investment within the first year. Dell also launched a new PowerEdge server line-up compatible with silicon from Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel, claiming a 70 percent performance improvement and 13-to-one server consolidation.