it looks like openai’s betting big on inference to beat anthropic over the next 6 months:

> between their cerebras and upcoming jalapeño ai chips, openai will have the ultimate hardware stack optimized for GPT
> they’ve cut inference costs by 50% (per the information) which will save them $10Ms
> gpt 5.6 leans heavily on agentic reasoning and execution (inference heavy)
inference makes up 40-50% of compute expenditure at labs, slashing that in half frees up compute to use for training - the compounded effects of this can’t be understated imo
inference is also a huge money maker: anthropic’s rev margin is ~80%
winner will be defined by how they manage inference.