Get Big or Get Small...

Meta just cut its AI developer pricing to a quarter of what Claude and OpenAI charge. Is that a smart land grab or a sign of weakness? Jared Blank and Andy Hoar (Brian's on vacation) break down the emerging market for cheap AI tokens, then dig into the trend reshaping B2B distribution: get big, get small, or get squeezed. Ferguson's $1.6B FloWorks deal and Affiliated Distributors' latest acquisition show the scale side. A small Akron, Ohio doorknob distributor shows the other. Plus: IBM's worst trading day in 115 years, and what it might mean for AI infrastructure spending.

Topics covered:

• Why Meta cut AI token prices by 75%, and what happens next
• The emergence of token arbitrage (OpenRouter) and off-peak AI pricing
• Ferguson's $1.6B acquisition of FloWorks and what it means for distribution TAM
• Affiliated Distributors' acquisition of supplyFORCE
• Smart scale vs. dumb scale: when getting bigger stops working
• The case for specialization: a doorknob distributor's turnaround
• IBM's historic 25% stock drop and the AI infrastructure spending debate

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