The cost of artificial intelligence is halving every quarter and breaking all records

Artificial intelligence is becoming cheaper at a rate unprecedented for any previous breakthrough technology. The cost of running models—while maintaining the quality of results—is falling by approximately 47% each quarter—that is, nearly 13 times a year. By comparison, DNA sequencing, advances in computing power, the falling cost of lithium-ion batteries, and even electricity have never shown such rapid rates of decline.

This is most clearly illustrated by the FrontierMath benchmark—a set of complex tasks used to evaluate the capabilities of models. In January 2025, it cost about 55 cents to reach the 25% correct-answer threshold using ChatGPT o3.

Over the next year and a half, the price fell by nearly 377 times. The newer model achieves the same result for about 0.15 cents—which is practically free compared to what it cost a year ago.

These figures were released by the research organization Epoch AI, which specializes in studying trends in the development of artificial intelligence. The study’s authors emphasize that this isn’t simply a matter of hardware becoming cheaper or infrastructure being optimized, but rather a reduction in the price per unit of «thinking"—the useful work performed by the model.

This trend has far-reaching implications for business and society. Technologies that were economically out of reach for small businesses or individual developers just a year ago are rapidly becoming widely accessible tools. If this trend continues, in just a few years the cost of complex analytical or creative tasks performed by artificial intelligence will approach zero.