AI Performance Costs Are Collapsing

New analysis shows the cost to achieve a given level of AI performance has fallen extremely rapidly—roughly 47% per quarter over the past three years—so the same benchmark performance now requires far less inference expenditure than before. In concrete terms, a model that cost $0.30 per question to match a benchmark in early 2025 was matched for about $0.0004 by mid‑2026, implying orders‑of‑magnitude cheaper deployment. — Falling per‑performance costs mean intelligence becomes economically available at scale, changing who can deploy advanced models, how regulation and safety must adapt, and how markets and geopolitics respond to AI diffusion.