I'm building on borrowed tokens
Nick Huber (@sweatystartup) posted this on X last night:
“This is all of AI right now.
The music will stop soon. Better find your chair.
VC money runs out -> prices rise dramatically -> users drop off -> valuations plummet.”
He was quoting Elon Musk, who had just replied to someone asking about a Grok Bot usage reset:
“The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue”
I read that and felt it in my stomach. Because that’s me. That’s my whole setup.
I’m running on borrowed tokens
In my last post I wrote about how I run everything from my phone. A whole crew of bots, each working on its own project. Servers, SEO, support, apps. All in my pocket.
What I didn’t say is what all of that runs on.
Subsidized AI tokens. Paid for, in large part, by American venture capital.
I’m not paying what this actually costs. Nobody is. Someone in Silicon Valley is covering the difference, betting that it pays off later.
And I’m a guy in Sweden building my entire way of working on top of that bet.
The rug can be pulled any day
Prices going up is one thing.
But what really worries me is something else: what happens if US authorities decide to restrict access for other countries? For Sweden. For Europe.
One decision in Washington, and my whole workflow is gone. Overnight.
I’d get rug-pulled. And there would be absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Europe is asleep
And this is the part that really frustrates me.
Sweden and Europe are deeply, deeply behind here. We don’t have our own alternative. Not one that’s even close.
We regulate. We debate. We write reports.
Meanwhile, the people who actually build things over here are completely dependent on what American companies, and the American government, decide to let us have.
“Just self-host then”
I know. I’ve heard it.
Run your own models. Own your stack. Power back to the people. I literally wrote that in my last post.
And I want that. I really do.
But right now, self-hosted models are way too slow. It’s not viable. Not for the speed I work at, and not for the productivity I need.
When you’re used to sending out an idea and testing it within minutes, waiting forever on a local model just isn’t an option. It kills the whole point.
So I’m stuck. I believe in owning my own tools, and I’m renting them from someone else’s venture fund.
Another way to look at it
Okay, here’s the flip side. And I actually kind of like this one.
My companies are built with AI. And they charge American customers.
So in a way, I’m taking those subsidized American tokens, turning them into products, and selling them back to Americans. In dollars.
Those dollars end up in Sweden. In Swedish companies.
I’m basically transferring USD into the Swedish economy, one AI-built product at a time.
Their VC money builds my products. Their customers pay for them. Sweden gets the dollars.
Not a bad deal, if you ask me. As long as it lasts.
So what do I do?
Honestly? I keep building.
Nick might be right. The music might stop. Prices might go through the roof, or someone might shut the door on Europe completely.
But until then, every day I get to build at this speed is a day I’m not going to waste.
I just know I’m dancing on borrowed time.
And I’d really like Europe to start building its own chairs.