The price of the frontier
This chart tracks the estimated cost of the most expensive AI training run to date, in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars, from Epoch AI's model database. Each step is a new frontier model that cost more to train than any before it — from under a million dollars a decade ago to hundreds of millions today. Estimates amortize hardware and energy over the run and carry substantial uncertainty.
What does it show?
The cost of a frontier training run has grown roughly tenfold since GPT-4 in 2023.
Methodology
Running maximum of estimated training compute cost across models in Epoch AI's AI Models database, by publication month, since 2016, in inflation-adjusted 2023 US dollars. Cost figures are Epoch's published amortized-hardware-plus-energy estimates and carry substantial uncertainty; coverage is a subset of models, so the frontier can revise as estimates are added. Data © Epoch AI, 'Data on AI Models', epoch.ai, CC BY 4.0.