Re:Closed AI models dominate the price-performance frontier
by dofm on Friday November 06, 2026 @10:28AM
(#50393514)
It’s not, of course; you’re going to act on your own requirements as you should.
But I think it becomes a little more relevant when making a price-performance comparison such as the article makes between “open” models and “closed” models.
Because the reader is invited by the term “price-performance” to think about efficiency, when in reality the results are being skewed by the fact that the user is not the only one paying for the service: investors are chipping in fairly directly for every token, at inference time.
Users are going to continue to do their own thing for their own reasons, and they should; that’s the market at work. But this is not an efficient market where meaningful comparisons can be made; all of the major closed providers are loss-leading.
But I think it becomes a little more relevant when making a price-performance comparison such as the article makes between “open” models and “closed” models.
Because the reader is invited by the term “price-performance” to think about efficiency, when in reality the results are being skewed by the fact that the user is not the only one paying for the service: investors are chipping in fairly directly for every token, at inference time.
Users are going to continue to do their own thing for their own reasons, and they should; that’s the market at work. But this is not an efficient market where meaningful comparisons can be made; all of the major closed providers are loss-leading.