will-inference-costs-come-down.md (1216B)
1 # Will Inference Costs Come Down? 2 3 ## Date: 2025/01/19 4 5 ## Context 6 7 I have seen a sentiment that the cost of inference will come down quickly over time. This sentiment will dictate what some startups build. If one expects the cost of inference to fall rapidly, making your product cost effective isn't a concern at present, in the future tokens will be very cheap so might as well build systems that use lots of tokens to generate exceptional results instead of being conservative with tokens while maintaining adequate results. Even if one expects prices to fall over time, there are still near term capitalization opportunities, but the upside for these opportunities may be limited. 8 9 Conversely, one may expect the price of inference to increase over time because the big players are subsidizing usage right now [1], but this will not be sustainable over longer timescales. 10 11 ## Citations 12 13 [1] - 14 [2] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20260117001407/https://openai.com/api/pricing/](https://web.archive.org/web/20260117001407/https://openai.com/api/pricing/) 15 [3] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20260119083924/https://claude.com/pricing#api](https://web.archive.org/web/20260119083924/https://claude.com/pricing#api)