Hidden in Plain Sight: How Gemini's Token Cache Transforms AI Agent Economics

Google's new cache-discount pricing tier for Gemini 2.5 Flash input tokens—announced quietly at I/O 2026—delivers a 10x cost reduction for repeated prompts, fundamentally reshaping which AI agents are economically viable to build. This single pricing change unlocks three previously unfeasible use cases: real-time security alert triage, per-user research digests, and lightweight monitoring agents. For teams evaluating agent architectures, this represents a more transformative shift in feasibility than any model capability unveiled at I/O.