Could This New AI Model Change Everything?
By Movieguide® Contributor
It looks like AI models aren’t just for Big Tech anymore; researchers recently launched a high-performing model for less than $50.
Researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington just debuted an AI model, S1, that “performs comparably” to industry heavy-hitters like OpenAI and DeepSeek’s math and coding models, per Mashable.
The twist? S1 was made with less than $50 of “cloud compute credits” and trained with just 1,000 questions. The whole process reportedly took just 26 minutes.
Google has also been working on cheaper AI models. Reuters reported that the tech company is updating their Gemini AI models “with competitive pricing to low-cost artificial intelligence models like that of Chinese rival DeepSeek” and “vary in price and performance.”
Another open-source reasoning model, made by UC Berkeley, cost just $450, “demonstrating that it is possible to replicate high-level reasoning capabilities affordably and efficiently,” per the researchers’ blog post.
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It’s no surprise tech companies are scrambling to figure out ways to make AI models for less — Chinese AI company DeepSeek recently rocked the industry when it announced it built its models for less than $6 million.
However, many have accused DeepSeek of exaggeration. Forbes reported that Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang believes DeepSeek AI “may be operating 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs.
“If true, this would suggest infrastructure costs far beyond the reported $6 million,” the outlet explained, adding that the $6 million figure “does not account for years of [research and development] and previous versions, synthetic data generation costs, or infrastructure and operational expenses.”
Forbes estimates that the “actual” cost of DeepSeek’s AI model is somewhere in the billions.
“DeepSeek AI’s lower-cost API could prove to be just another example of China’s AI strategy to undercut U.S. tech dominance,” Forbes concluded, explaining that the US is focused on “investing in” and advancing AI infrastructure, while “China appears to remain focused on short-term disruption rather than true innovation.”
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