I take advantage of AI on a regular basis. However there are solely so many questions an individual can ask a chatbot in a day.
Ultimately, now we have to eat and sleep. And all of us have loads of different issues to do moreover sitting at a pc typing prompts.
That places a pure restrict on AI demand.
However AI brokers are beginning to take away that restrict.
As I confirmed you final week, an agent can spend hours researching a subject, writing software program or finishing a sophisticated task. Which means it may possibly make dozens and even a whole lot of requests to an AI mannequin alongside the way in which.
And in contrast to us, brokers can work across the clock. What’s extra, corporations may also deploy hundreds of them on the similar time.
This week’s chart exhibits simply how dramatically that’s altering AI demand.
Machines Are Turning into AI’s Largest Customers
This week’s chart comes from Andreessen Horowitz and OpenRouter, a platform that permits builders to entry a whole lot of various AI fashions via a single service.
It tracks token utilization on OpenRouter primarily based on the place the requests originate.
The darkish crimson line exhibits human exercise, which incorporates individuals interacting immediately with an AI mannequin. The blue agentic exercise line represents AI methods working via assignments with restricted human involvement. And the combined class consists of site visitors that mixes parts of each.
Have a look.
Supply: Andreessen Horowitz/OpenRouter
At first of September 2025, practically all of the exercise on OpenRouter got here immediately from people.
Agentic utilization barely registered.
However as you’ll be able to see, that started to alter early this yr. On February 6, AI brokers consumed extra tokens than people for the very first time.
And since then, the hole has exploded.
In the course of the newest week proven on the chart, brokers consumed roughly 7.3 trillion tokens, whereas people solely used about 1.4 trillion.
In different phrases, AI brokers at the moment are consuming greater than 5X as many tokens as individuals on OpenRouter. And agentic token utilization has elevated roughly 14X since February.
To be clear, this chart doesn’t signify each AI request on the earth. It solely tracks exercise routed via OpenRouter.
The corporate can also’t look inside each utility to see whether or not an individual or an agent generated every request. As an alternative, it classifies exercise utilizing a number of clues, together with how usually instruments are known as, the variety of turns concerned and the way a lot time passes between requests.
So we shouldn’t assume that brokers are consuming 5 occasions as many tokens throughout your complete AI business.
However it’s clear that — at the same time as human token utilization continues to climb — agentic utilization has damaged away from it completely.
And the rationale comes right down to how otherwise brokers work.
While you ask a chatbot a query, it typically provides you a solution and waits for an additional immediate.
However an agent can maintain going.
It could actually search the web, learn paperwork, name outdoors instruments, examine its work and check out once more when one thing goes incorrect. It would make dozens of requests earlier than an individual sees the ultimate consequence.
And it’s not restricted to coding and software program growth.
Firms are constructing brokers to assist discover new clients, reply assist questions, evaluation monetary paperwork and deal with numerous routine duties.
And each time an agent goes to work, it consumes extra tokens.
Which means an organization with 10,000 staff may sometime have tens of hundreds of brokers working alongside them. All of them consuming AI across the clock.
And that would utterly change how a lot computing energy the world really wants.
Right here’s My Take
This week’s chart provides us a really completely different method to consider AI demand.
Till just lately, it’s been measured by how many individuals use AI and the way usually they use it.
However a single individual may quickly have dozens of brokers engaged on their behalf. And each a kind of brokers will want computing energy.
That’s why the rise of AI brokers may make the infrastructure growth far greater than human demand alone ever may.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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