That ‘cheap’ open-source AI model is actually burning through your compute budget

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now

A comprehensive new study has revealed that open-source artificial intelligence models consume significantly more computing resources than their closed-source competitors when performing identical tasks, potentially undermining their cost advantages and reshaping how enterprises evaluate AI deployment strategies.

The research, conducted by AI firm Nous Research, found that open-weight models use between 1.5 to 4 times more tokens — the basic units of AI computation — than closed models like those from OpenAI and Anthropic. For simple knowledge questions, the gap widened dramatically, with some open models using up to 10 times more tokens.

Visa’s $3.5B Bet on AI

Measuring Thinking Efficiency in Reasoning Models: The Missing Benchmarkhttps://t.co/b1e1rJx6vZ