What Is Tokenization? How AI Turns Text Into Tokens
Unite, Friday, September 11th, 2026
A foundational primer on how text becomes the discrete units models actually process, and why it matters for cost.
This primer explains how tokenization converts raw text into the discrete units a model processes mathematically, covering the main algorithms, their trade-offs and how to evaluate tokenizer behavior for a given corpus.
The practical relevance is broader than it first appears: tokenization determines cost, since billing is per token, and it explains a family of otherwise mysterious model behaviors around numbers, code and non-English text.
For teams whose non-English workloads cost more than expected, the tokenizer is usually the explanation.