Inference is the New Sales & Marketing Spend

High inference costs are OK—if they make your product so viral and so competitive it almost sells itself

Here’s the counterintuitive insight that’s reshaping how the smartest AI founders think about unit economics:

Your inference costs aren’t your gross margin problem. They’re your CAC replacement.

The companies growing fastest right now—Cursor crossing $1B ARR with ~300 employees and no traditional marketing, Lovable hitting $300M ARR with zero paid acquisition—aren’t sweating inference costs. They’re leaning into them. They’re treating compute as their primary growth investment, not their primary ma...