Compounding case
Burn treadmill
Knife's edge
route: compounding
per-token serving cost falls
fast
slow
| pricing power
holds
forced to match cuts
Gross-margin waterfall: inference unit economics reroutes run-rate to profit or burn
gross-margin waterfall — the unit-economics gate inside the run-rate
revenue run-rate
tokens served
compute cost
per inference
cut margin outlook — growth ≠ profit
serving cost
falls fast → slow
pricing power
holds → match cuts
unit-economics lever
scale cuts cost
price war → margin
durable compounding
reported Q2 2026 profit
operating leverage compounds
burn treadmill
margin compresses
run-rate compounds losses
single gate: serving-cost trajectory vs pricing power reroutes the stream
branches are scenarios — the reported first profit is not company-confirmed
stream routed to compounding
stream routed to burn treadmill
knife's edge — both branches open