Kristin Zwez

Time to First Token: The Metric That Will Define Our Era | Nscale, VAST Data & NVIDIA | RAISE 2026

Kristin Zwez, Jeff Denworth, Rod Evans, Christine

Jensen Huang and Vast Data redefine AI infrastructure economics by shifting the primary metric from hardware utilization to Time to First Token, ensuring that billions in capital investments for massive GPU clusters yield immediate ROI. This evolution integrates storage directly into the core computer to maximize inference speed while driving a business model transition from hourly compute sales to token-as-a-service. Consequently, enterprises are advised to abandon legacy IT stacks in favor of fully integrated data computers and to prioritize executive ownership of AI adoption to avoid costly silos and ensure rigorous bottom-line execution.