Tokens are the new OpEx
March has been crazy. Everyday I'm bombarded by AI news – launching of new LLMs, new Claude features, a better way to do things, combining this to that, datacenters sprouting up here and there – and even for someone who loves change, the velocity of AI changes is honestly hard to keep up.
I'm (still) loving every bit of it, and my brain is on fire. Check in on me in 2 months, I might have a different story to tell. Might be fried by then.
Three key mini inflections took place in my life with AI this month:
1st week of March
- The Deliveroo exit from Singapore. I did a symbolic mini tour around almost all the zones, March 1 – 4. It was nice.
- My attempt to get hired as an apprentice with AI Singapore. On March 4 they sent out the technical assessment to everyone who applied for the apprenticeship program, giving us 6 days to work on it then submit. Wish me luck.
2nd week of March
- I met up with a few of my ex-colleagues. We talked about the future and our plans. It was nice to catch up with them.
3rd week of March
- With the GTC 2026 and SXSW keynotes combines, I finally understood where we are heading, and really gave me a lot to think about, mainly how what value can I offer in this new world, and what gaps I have.
- I paid for Claude for a month, but have not explored Cowork or Code in depth. I'm still able to build lots of stuff just using the chat.
- My class assignment for this module 2 involves Big Data. I ingested 23 million rows from a public dataset and did analysis on it. It was fun.
At some point in the keynote Jensen said that in the future we would not just be paid in money, aka salary, but also, with tokens. I believe him. But what does it mean for us, the common folk? He talked about AI factories and showing off all his highly efficient racks with awesome “tokens/watt” servers, and how everything will be opensource. It's like “here's all the free chocolate and candy you can eat, but you have to pay for the teeth.”
Welcome to the new world.