IBM CEO says open-weight models reach 90% of performance at 10% to 25% of the cost
🎧 Listen to this story
During IBM’s financial-results presentation, CEO Arvind Krishna said the gap between frontier models and open-weight alternatives has narrowed. In his example, the difference went from 70 versus 20 or 30 points in late 2024 to 70 versus 50 in late 2025; open-weight models now reach about 90% of the performance of the most advanced models, he said, while costing 10% to 25% as much per token.
Krishna did not identify specific evaluations supporting those figures. He also said an average large company could start with two or three racks to run these models, although that option requires investment in infrastructure, electricity, maintenance and specialized staff. The comparison concerns models whose weights can be downloaded and run by third parties, which does not necessarily provide access to the code or training data.
Why it matters · editorial interpretation
If Krishna’s comparison holds, organizations may evaluate open-weight models not only by cost per token, but also by the investment in infrastructure, electricity, maintenance and specialized staff. Since he did not identify the evaluations behind the figures, the scale of that advantage remains difficult to verify.