Five frontier models now tie on intelligence within five points while their cost per unit spans 3.8x. Google's own silicon explains the gap, & every other lab is now racing to build the same advantage.
Anthropic & OpenAI both re-rated their run rates in 2026 by segmenting : a mandatory enterprise repricing against an 80% price cut on the cheapest tier.
GPU rental prices doubled in six months while inference prices kept falling. The reconciliation is efficiency : the hinge that turns scarce silicon into cheap intelligence.
The AI market's center of gravity is mid-tier inference, & three forces are driving its prices down : lab rivalry, open weights & fine tuning.
Meta's dual-tier AI pricing introduces an explicit barter : a 92% discount on inference in exchange for your data. Applying Michael Mauboussin's insight that prices contain information reveals the clearing price of prompt data : $1.24 per million tokens.
A 2x2 framework for understanding how AI will impact different roles based on demand ceiling and whether machines can verify correctness.
Explore why AI outperforms humans in key tasks yet commands lower prices. Analysis of pricing dynamics across autonomous vehicles, healthcare & enterprise tech.