AI may feel like a flat monthly subscription today, but this podcast argues that the economics are moving toward a metered, multi-model market. Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley examine AI routers, token marketplaces, and agent orchestration9—tools designed to let firms choose different models for different jobs rather than committing every task to one vendor.
The Accounting Tech Lab is an ongoing series that explores the intersection of public accounting and technology.
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Brian explains why OpenRouter and LibreChat can make model choice resemble buying fuel: use the amount of compute you need in the engine best suited to the work. Randy connects that concept to a three-layer AI strategy spanning general productivity tools, AI embedded in accounting applications, and specialized agents.
The hosts also discuss the difficulty of forecasting token budgets, the likelihood of more usage-based pricing, and a growing field of gateways including OpenRouter, Ramp Router, Factory Router, Portkey, LiteLLM, Cloudflare, Kong, AWS, Microsoft, and Google.
For accounting firms, the practical issue is not merely cost. Model selection, privacy, compliance, governance, and vendor concentration all matter when agents handle sensitive workflows. The takeaway: expect AI procurement to look less like buying one software subscription and more like managing a portfolio of compute suppliers—optimizing each workload for capability, cost, risk, and control.
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