The Real AI Race May Not Be About Bigger Models - It May Be About Cheaper Intelligence✎ Edit

The Real AI Race May Not Be About Bigger Models  It May Be About Cheaper Intelligence

When I look at this comparison from my finance and accounting role at AINNA, the model name is not the line item that moves the business case.

The bigger story is the cost curve.

In this setup, pricing drops from roughly $0.20/M input and $1.20/M output to $0.10/M input and $0.50/M output, while retaining the same stated context window and tool capabilities.

If that trend holds, it changes the economics of building AI systems - not just the technical benchmark.

From my side, this is another strong reason to bulk-distill local LLMs  and possibly SLMs as well.

Instead of carrying expensive external inference as a permanent operating cost, we can use increasingly optimized models as teachers to generate training data, refine workflows, build domain-specific reasoning patterns, and continuously improve our own local models.

The goal is not necessarily to build the biggest model.

The goal is to build a model that is optimized enough for its actual job.

For Malaysian SMEs, that could mean smaller models handling accounting, asset management, inventory, operations, customer service, machinery control, document processing, or internal automation, while larger external models are only used when truly necessary.

I would like this pricing trend to continue.

At least until our own local LLMs are mature enough to handle most of the workload independently - and at a cost per transaction the business can defend.

Use optimized models to build. Distill what matters. Reduce dependency over time.