The Cost of Intelligence: A Breakfast Briefing on AI Spend
Hosted by Bay State IT
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
9:00 AM–11:00 AM ET
About
A Breakfast Briefing on the Cost of AI
Most AI cost problems look like this: The API bill blows through the monthly budget in the first week. Your Claude or ChatGPT plan hits its usage cap by Wednesday. A task that ran fine last month now takes three tries and twice the tokens. But spending more isn't the only fix.
Join Bay State IT for coffee, bagels, and an informative talk on the real economics of AI. We will walk through the cost-of-intelligence benchmarks that now exist, compare the major models on what they deliver per dollar, and show why more context is not always better, why a large model with medium reasoning often beats a small model at maximum reasoning, and where ultra-cheap models can fit into your workflow. You will leave with practical ways to get more out of the plan you already have.
This talk is for anyone who pays for AI. That includes companies with enterprise Claude or ChatGPT seats or API usage to manage, but it also includes anyone on a standard plan who keeps running into the usage cap. The same habits decide how far your budget goes, either way.
Agenda:
9:00 AM: Check-in, breakfast, and networking
9:30 AM: Presentation: The Cost of Intelligence
10:15 AM: Q&A
10:30 AM: Open networking and coffee
Space is limited!
Host
Bay State IT
Location
Microsoft New England Research and Development Center
1 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142
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