Sam Altman Says AI Business Will Come Down to 'Selling Tokens' as Intelligence Becomes a Metered Utility

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has framed the future of the AI industry in stark commercial terms, predicting that his company and every other major model provider will ultimately make money by "selling tokens" as machine intelligence becomes a metered utility akin to electricity and water. The remarks, delivered at BlackRock's U.S. Infrastructure Summit in Washington, D.C. in March 2026, have circulated widely as a concise articulation of how the economics of the so-called race to superintelligence may play out.