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Gemini 3.5 Flash

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Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#251

Per million input/output tokens: Gemini 2.5 flash: $0.30/$2.50 Gemini 3.0 flash preview: $0.50/$3.00 Gemini 3.5 flash: $1.50/$9.00 Interesting pricing direction. I don't think we have ever seen a 3x price increase for in the immediate next same-sized model (and lol @ 3 only ever getting a preview). 3.5 flash costs similar to Gemini 2.5 pro which was $1.25/$10

Gemini 2.5 flash was the best Gemini model.

Not the most intelligent but perfect balance of cheap, fast and not-too-dumb.

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#252

Per million input/output tokens: Gemini 2.5 flash: $0.30/$2.50 Gemini 3.0 flash preview: $0.50/$3.00 Gemini 3.5 flash: $1.50/$9.00 Interesting pricing direction. I don't think we have ever seen a 3x price increase for in the immediate next same-sized model (and lol @ 3 only ever getting a preview). 3.5 flash costs similar to Gemini 2.5 pro which was $1.25/$10

If Google is actually getting cheaper inference than everyone else with their TPUs, this smells like trouble to me. Maybe serving LLMs at a profit is proving difficult. Or maybe they think because their benchmarks are good they can ramp up the prices. Seems like they don’t have the market share to justify a move like that yet to me.

Prevailing wisdom is that serving LLMs at a profit is achievable... it's when you factor in the cost of training them that prices get astronomical real fast.

Open-source model inference providers (who do not have to bear the cost of training) seem able to do it at much lower prices.

https://www.together.ai/pricing

https://fireworks.ai/pricing#serverless-pricing (scroll down to headline models)

Of course, it's possible that they are burning through investor cash as well, and apples-to-apples comparisons are not possible because AFAIK Google does not mention the size/paramcount for 3.5 Flash.

But if the prevailing wisdom is true, I think it's actually encouraging. It suggests that OpenAI and Anthropic could perhaps, if they need to, achieve profitability if they slow down model development and focus on tooling etc. instead. If true that's probably good news for everybody w.r.t. preventing a bursting of this economic bubble.

...my opinions here are of course, conjecture built on top of conjecture....

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen AI is unprofitable, especially at the insanely cheap rates they've been offering to get people in the door. So expect more increases in the future.

These companies are unprofitable (as all companies at this stage and ambition should be) but I increasingly don't see any justification for the idea that it is fundamentally unprofitable. Inference alone is certainly profitable. I'm running models at home that are comparable to performance of paid models a year or so ago for free. Even for much larger models the cost around inference serving are clearly manageable. T…

And if you can run those strong models at home for free, why would hosting them be a successful business for any of these providers?

Profitable maybe, in terms of having low costs, but why pay Google or whoever when you can do it yourself for cheaper/"free"?

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need another "Deepseek moment" or else it will become impossible for the regular dude to use AI. It will become something that only big companies can afford.

What we need is a deepseek moment in hardware ie China reaching parity on node size that is the only way latest computers let alone latest ai will be available to us in the future otherwise the profit margins will push most production to AI.

To be honest, China not having access to the latest hardware is exactly what has driven LLM technology forward the last 2 years.

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#256

Per million input/output tokens: Gemini 2.5 flash: $0.30/$2.50 Gemini 3.0 flash preview: $0.50/$3.00 Gemini 3.5 flash: $1.50/$9.00 Interesting pricing direction. I don't think we have ever seen a 3x price increase for in the immediate next same-sized model (and lol @ 3 only ever getting a preview). 3.5 flash costs similar to Gemini 2.5 pro which was $1.25/$10

They probably never intended to keep serving cheap models. This is a natural way to introduce the squeeze, now that they have people who built services on their API. It makes a lot of sense to have an abstraction layer where the provider doesn't matter. If you are working in Kotlin, Koog is excellent.

switching models is insanely cheap compared to token cost on anything signficant, this is a take so cynical it misses the reality

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gemini isn't even that good. just tested 3.5 on usual complex prompts to opus/chat 5.5. meh

Are you really comparing flash to opus? Shouldn't you be comparing pro?

The benchmark tables in the Google announcement include Opus 4.7, and the numbers are very impressive. Caveat emptor, but it's not unreasonable to compare a new Flash to a current-gen Opus, even if some of the results confirm expectations

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen AI is unprofitable, especially at the insanely cheap rates they've been offering to get people in the door. So expect more increases in the future.

These companies are unprofitable (as all companies at this stage and ambition should be) but I increasingly don't see any justification for the idea that it is fundamentally unprofitable. Inference alone is certainly profitable. I'm running models at home that are comparable to performance of paid models a year or so ago for free. Even for much larger models the cost around inference serving are clearly manageable. T…

If it's profitable, why haven't they reported any profits? People like Ed Zitron have done the math and it just doesn't add up. I mean he just published this piece today: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-too-expensive/

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#259
post #131

The pelican is a lot : https://github.com/simonw/llm-gemini/issues/133#issuecomment... Not a great bicycle though, it forgot the bar between the pedals and the back wheel and weirdly tangled the other bars. Expensive too - that pelican cost 13 cents: https://www.llm-prices.com/#it=11&ot=14403&sel=gemini-3.5-fl...

Forgetting the chainstay is typical of asking random people to draw a bicycle. https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/ > most ended up drawing something that was pretty far off from a regular men’s bicycle

Asking random people to write SVG gives even worse results

Re: Gemini 3.5 Flash

#260
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen AI is unprofitable, especially at the insanely cheap rates they've been offering to get people in the door. So expect more increases in the future.

It is insanely profitable though, if you cut out r&d cost, plus the marketing and loss leaders. Don't let them gaslight you. Even anthropic who does not own any hardware still have a big margin providing claude models.

Then why haven't they reported any profits using GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles)? They all use ARR which is easily gamed.
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