Benchmarks tell us how AI models perform in controlled environments. Real-world usage tells us how people actually use them.

After observing more than 750 trillion tokens flowing through one of the world's largest AI marketplaces, OpenRouter has a unique view into the gap between benchmark performance and production reality.

In this session, Chris Clark, Co-Founder and COO of OpenRouter, will share surprising insights from the front lines of AI adoption: why the future is increasingly multi-model, how organizations balance quality against cost and reliability, why model lock-in is becoming a strategic risk, and what patterns are emerging across developers, startups, and enterprises deploying AI at scale.

For anyone trying to understand where AI is really going, this talk offers a perspective grounded not in theory, but in observed behavior across the global AI economy.