Tag

#inference-cost

2 stories tagged inference-cost.

Line chart of LLM inference price collapsing at a fixed performance level from late 2022 to late 2024

How cheap inference made the one-person studio viable

Building a one-person data studio used to be impossible on the economics alone. Inference at a fixed quality level fell roughly 280 times in two years, and that changed the math.

Lars Cornelissen · May 19, 2026

Three declining lines on a log scale showing LLM inference price falling at 9x, 40x and 900x per year for different task difficulties

Engineering

Inference got cheap, but not for the work that pays

LLM inference costs fell between 9 and 900 times a year depending on the task. The cheapest gains landed on easy work, while frontier reasoning barely moved.

Lars Cornelissen · May 4, 2026