Salim's Law: 10x token drop = 100x experiments
Salim Ismail proposed that every 10x drop in the cost of AI tokens enables 100 times more experiments, compounding AI's impact on innovation.
Snapshot · Moonshots with Peter Diamandis
SpaceX IPOs at $2.89T Market Cap, US Govt Suspends Fable & Mythos 5, Altman Delays OpenAI’s IPO | EP #265
Explore episode
Jun 18, 2026
Where this was said
Dave and Salim on Altman's Strategic Position and Intelligence as Utility
At 1:02:10 · chapter starts 59:05
Dave argues Altman has no personal financial stake in rushing the IPO and may be struggling for relevance. Salim proposes Salim's Law: every 10x token drop yields 100x more experiments. [1] — Salim Ismail "Every 10x drop in tokens means we're doing 100 times more experiments." 1:02:04
OpenAI's IPO Delay: Sam Altman's Deeper Signal
Sam Altman said the faster recursive self-improvement takes off, the more it makes sense to delay OpenAI's IPO. The shallow read: Codex revenue isn't ready. The deeper read: if a company can improve itself without needing external capital, this is the earliest signal of technology decoupling from capital — a preview of what a post-capitalist economy looks like.
Codex Sets Its Own Goals — The Beginning of Agentic Self-Direction
OpenAI's Codex can now set its own goals. Developers on the team no longer write their own objectives — they ask Codex to write a goal for itself and for each sub-agent it spawns. This is the inflection point where you stop telling AI what to do and start telling it what you want.
Similar snapshots
MVP built in one week
Sam's initial MVP was coded in approximately one week using ChatGPT voice mode and copy-pasting code, with no prior technical experience.
Discord vs email for young users
Sam argues Discord is 10x better than email for building relationships with younger users who rarely check their inbox.
Monthly infra costs ~$780–$980
Sam's monthly operating costs include Cursor ($200), AI image generation ($100), AI video generation ($200), hosting ($100), email marketing ($80), and AI compute ($300–$500).
ChatGPT-powered pain point research
Sam recommends copying days of Discord chat history into ChatGPT and prompting it to list recurring pain points as a fast, free market research technique.
50 free tools built total
Bhanu and his team built approximately 50 free tools to attract search traffic, each linked back to SiteGPT.
New tool built in under 5 minutes
With AI coding tools like Cursor, Bhanu can now create a new free marketing tool in less than 5 minutes by referencing existing tools.
KD filter < 10 for rankable keywords
Bhanu filters Ahrefs keyword results to show only those with a keyword difficulty below 10, making them realistic ranking targets for any decent website.
Minimum 1,000 monthly search volume
Bhanu sets a minimum search volume of 1,000 monthly searches when selecting keywords to target with free tools.
20 downloads/day at launch
PropGPT averaged 20 downloads per day right after launching on the App Store through influencer marketing.
