Price-performance arbitrage on frontier-lab token pricing Cheap open-weights tokens flow through a buyer bench into a margin router; substitution routes traffic into frontier labs, forcing a cut-price or ship-capability response, while an open-weights loop keeps pressure on the frontier-index tier. DeepSeek V4 Claude Opus 4.8 ~16x blended gap $0.23/M $3.85/M blended Cheap open-weights substitute DeepSeek V4 family open weights Buyers re-benchmark sample DeepSeek vs Opus, own loads Substitute at the margin switch a fraction Frontier labsforced to choose Cut price Ship faster Cut price Ship faster cheap tier mid tier frontier-index tier open weights cannot be shut off
eval sample first: where the capability gap stays wide, buyers keep traffic on Opus.