Inference Costs

Core Summary The AI industry is undergoing a structural shift, pivoting from the era of massive pre-training scaling laws toward an 'Inference-First' paradigm defined by computational efficiency and real-time operational economics. Bagua Insight ▶ The Economics of Inference: The battlefield has shifted from 'one-time training' to 'continuous inference.' The ability to optimize cost-per-token is now the primary determinant of whether an AI product achieves sustainable unit economics. ▶ Shift in Paradigms: We are witnessing a move away from 'brute-force' parameter scaling toward test-time compute. This suggests that the industry is prioritizing practical, scalable intelligence over theoretical model size. Actionable Advice Re-evaluate your AI stack: Prioritize inference optimization (e.g., speculative decoding, model distillation, and quantization) over chasing the absolute latest model benchmarks. Focus on the latency-cost-quality triad: In the coming year, the winners will be those who master the trade-offs between model performance and infrastructure overhead.