Five-person team trains frontier-level open model for $300K

Paper Instruments released Ultramarine 1 Flash, an open-source model for knowledge work claiming near-Fable 5 performance at 1/60 the price. It was post-trained by a five-person team for about $300K, priced at $0.15/M input and $0.50/M output tokens.

2026-10-15 ~ 2026-10-15 · 4 related posts

• 5-person team open-sources frontier-class Ultramarine 1 Flash for ~$300k — willcb · 2026-10-15
• Ultramarine 1 Flash launches at $0.15/M input tokens, open weights in two weeks — testingcatalog · 2026-10-15
• Ultramarine 1 Flash claims Fable 5-level performance at 60x lower cost, weights soon open — ycombinator · 2026-10-15
• 5-Person Team Trains Open-Source Frontier-Class Ultramarine 1 Flash for ~$300k, 60x Cheaper — EXM7777 · 2026-10-15