Open Source Models Squeeze Small Model Profits
a_karvonen · x · 2026-07-10
The post argues that once open-source models reach a certain capability threshold, vendors' profit margins on small models will shrink rapidly, potentially making frontier labs less focused on small model strategies.
As an example, the author notes that Deepseek V4 Flash costs only a tenth of Haiku 4.5 but delivers superior performance. Even Qwen-3.6-35B-A3B is considered smarter than Haiku.
More from Models
- Google says Gemini 4 has entered its most ambitious pre-training run yet — himanshustwts · 2026-07-22
- China’s AI arms race is increasingly defined by chips, data centers, and open models — BenBajarin · 2026-07-22
- Sam Altman is headed to Washington to brief Congress on OpenAI’s GPT-6 line — inductionheads · 2026-07-22
- Benchmark chart pits GPT-5.6 Luna, Grok 4.5 and Gemini 3.6 Flash on price and scores — iruletheworldmo · 2026-07-22
- Claim says Kimi was distilled from Fable, sparking a model-attribution jab — cephaloform · 2026-07-22
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is now available in Antigravity and chat — MartianOnJupiter · 2026-07-22