Stop Renting Your Cognitive Infrastructure - Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan, Kalmantic Labs
This talk addresses the economic challenges of relying on rented AI inference infrastructure, particularly for agents. The core thesis is that while renting models is useful for initial learning and finding product-market fit, long-term operation requires owning the inference infrastructure to manage costs effectively. The speaker shares personal experience moving agents off a paid API to owned infrastructure after encountering unsustainable expenses.
World's Fair 2026 8 min