The AI Credit Resale Economy

AI 算力额度转售经济

Where This Started This is a follow-up article to a piece I recently wrote about the token relay market. Noticeably absent from that piece was a mention of the rise of “token brokers” — people who buy unused credits from startups and then resell them. I first heard about token brokers while chatting with a good friend of mine who was receiving offers for Anthropic tokens at steep discounts. It wasn’t just him, though. As I started talking to more founders about what I was building, they said the same thing: they were getting a lot of inbound email from people looking to buy or sell off-market inference. Startups swapping credits is nothing new, and I knew this was happening in several startup forums and groups, but this was when I realized that the market was being commercialized. So I did what any normal person would do. I got the brokers’ email addresses and started emailing them to learn more.

一切的起点 这是我近期关于 Token 中继市场文章的后续报道。在那篇文章中，我明显遗漏了“Token 经纪人”的兴起——这些人从初创公司购买未使用的算力额度，然后进行转售。我第一次听说 Token 经纪人是在与一位好友聊天时，他当时正收到以极低折扣购买 Anthropic Token 的邀约。不仅是他，当我开始与更多创始人交流我的项目时，他们也反映了同样的情况：他们收到了大量来自寻求买卖场外推理算力的陌生邮件。初创公司之间交换额度并非新鲜事，我也知道这在一些创业论坛和群组中时有发生，但直到那时我才意识到，这个市场正在走向商业化。于是，我做了任何正常人都会做的事：我获取了这些经纪人的邮箱地址，并开始给他们发邮件以了解更多信息。

The Direct Contact Before my own outreach, it’s worth seeing what founders are actually receiving. Both of these were forwarded to me by friends. I started by sourcing a few email addresses from friends. The first two emails I sent bounced, but the third was a hit. What’s interesting is the amount of supply. The seller was offering $100k in spend per day. They aren’t handing out the provider keys directly; instead, they act as a proxy that probably picks from a pool of keys and forwards the request.

直接接触 在进行我自己的外联之前，有必要看看创始人实际上收到了什么。以下两封邮件都是朋友转发给我的。我首先从朋友那里获取了几个邮箱地址。前两封邮件被退回了，但第三封成功了。有趣的是供应量：卖家每天提供价值 10 万美元的额度。他们并不直接分发服务商的密钥，而是充当代理，很可能是从密钥池中挑选一个并转发请求。

Credit Marketplaces There are a few websites promoting credit brokering as well. One of them, AI Credits, bills itself as a credit marketplace. For another flavor of the pure-play credit reseller marketplaces, take a look at AICreditMart. These sites offer credits at most of the major cloud and inference providers. AI Credits’ onboarding process is pretty straightforward, and you can even select your preferred delivery method as the seller. I went ahead and listed my credits, which are still pending approval.

额度交易平台 还有一些网站也在推广额度经纪业务。其中一个名为 AI Credits 的网站自称为额度交易市场。如果想看看另一种纯粹的额度转售市场，可以看看 AICreditMart。这些网站提供大多数主流云服务商和推理服务商的额度。AI Credits 的入驻流程非常简单，作为卖家，你甚至可以选择首选的交付方式。我尝试挂出了我的额度，目前仍在等待审核。

Bulk Discounts Another site that I found through a friend was CheapCredits. This site positions itself as a router that is able to achieve its discounts through “bulk pricing.” I noticed that this was a trend with a number of sites that I believe are acting as credit brokers. They present themselves as being able to offer discounts based on bulk purchases. Some other examples include Tokvana and Neokens. Having spent time in the industry, I’d say that a 40% discount is very unlikely unless you are one of the provider’s top customers. My hunch is that CheapCredits is acquiring the supply in other ways. CheapCredits even has a Data Processing Agreement for anyone looking to stay GDPR compliant.

批量折扣 我通过朋友发现的另一个网站是 CheapCredits。该网站将自己定位为一个路由器，声称通过“批量定价”来实现折扣。我注意到，许多我认为是额度经纪人的网站都有这种趋势。他们宣称能够基于批量采购提供折扣。其他例子还包括 Tokvana 和 Neokens。在业内待久了，我认为除非你是服务商的顶级客户，否则 40% 的折扣几乎是不可能的。我的直觉是，CheapCredits 正在通过其他方式获取供应。CheapCredits 甚至为那些希望符合 GDPR 合规性的用户提供了数据处理协议。

The Message Boards I checked where you’d expect to find underground marketplaces. Telegram had a few channels, with one being relatively active. There are also sporadic Reddit posts. If you’ve been hanging out in any of the closed-off startup groups, I’m sure you’ve seen a number of these posts as well.

留言板 我查看了那些你可能会找到地下交易市场的地方。Telegram 上有几个频道，其中一个相对活跃。Reddit 上也有零星的帖子。如果你经常混迹于一些封闭的创业群组，我相信你也一定见过不少这类帖子。

So How Big Is This Market? My rough estimate is that, across the sites, forums, and resellers I looked at, there are probably tens of millions of these credits being offered. Unfortunately, when you try to offer nice things, abuse isn’t far behind. Tokens have become a pseudo-currency, and there is enough liquidity in the market to allow for a lot of abuse. As we see the market turn and companies become more aware of costs, crackdowns on this type of abuse probably aren’t far behind.

这个市场有多大？ 我的粗略估计是，在我调查的网站、论坛和转售商中，可能存在数千万美元的额度在进行交易。不幸的是，当你试图提供好东西时，滥用行为往往紧随其后。Token 已经成为一种准货币，市场上有足够的流动性来容纳大量的滥用行为。随着市场转向，企业对成本变得更加敏感，针对此类滥用的打击行动可能很快就会到来。