LLM Cost Optimization: Cut Token Spend 35-50% with Hybrid

What Is LLM Cost Optimization? LLM cost optimization means cutting your API token spend without making your product worse. The numbers are brutal: according to Andreessen Horowitz's 2025 AI survey, the median Series B AI startup burns through \$250K-500K annually on inference costs. That bill doubles every 8 months as usage scales. Here's the kicker - we've analyzed dozens of production AI applications, and 40-70% of token spend goes to completions that users never directly see. Background summarization, data extraction, content moderation, warmup passes.