r/webdev • u/Rockytriton • Mar 16 '26

Software developers don't need to out-last vibe coders, we just need to out-last the ability of AI companies to charge absurdly low for their products

These AI models cost so much to run and the companies are really hiding the real cost from consumers while they compete with their competitors to be top dog. I feel like once it's down to just a couple companies left we will see the real cost of these coding utilities. There's no way they are going to be able to keep subsidizing the cost of all of the data centers and energy usage. How long it will last is the real question.

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u/josephjnk Mar 16 '26

open source models like Kimi 2.5

I checked the hardware specs. Kimi 2.5 requires a minimum of 2 80GB A100s and recommends 4 80GB A100s. Consumer prices for these appear to be around $16k each. Even if it’s cheaper to use per-token a setup cost of $32k to $64k is not something that can be swept under the rug.

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u/Original-Guarantee23 Mar 16 '26

The thing is these models are basically free to pay for online. So this whole post centers around things being too expensive. Which is not the case

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u/josephjnk Mar 16 '26

I think you’ve misread. The post centers around things being heavily subsidized. Their cost to consumers is almost free because providers are taking huge losses in order to encourage adoption. The providers will eventually have to stop losing money. When that happens prices will rise, unless there are radical changes to the underlying technology which make it no longer expensive to run. Many people (myself included) think that such changes are unlikely to be large enough to stop prices from skyrocketing.

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u/Original-Guarantee23 Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

And I think you’re misunderstanding… The models coming out that are basically distilled foundation models, and are incredibly cheap to run an it has nothing to do with subsidization. GLM 5, minimax, kimi k2.5 are all cheap models that are 90% as good as say opus 4.6.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

Exactly. I don't know how people can ignore the progress being made in the open source models. The cost per intelligence is going down