The AI race becomes an efficiency race: fewer parameters, cheaper inference wins
ingliguori · x · 2026-09-23
- The biggest AI model may no longer matter most — the new battleground is efficiency.
- DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen and GLM are pushing fewer active parameters, lower memory use, cheaper inference, higher throughput, and longer context.
- That changes the economics of AI: the winner may be the model delivering the most useful intelligence per dollar, watt and GPU.
- Are we entering the end of the "bigger is always better" era?
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