https://falcao.org/tags/competition/Recent content in Competition on Danilo Falcão da SilvaHugoen-usSun, 19 Jul 2026 09:40:00 -0300https://falcao.org/posts/frontier-ai-better-cheaper-competition/Sun, 19 Jul 2026 09:40:00 -0300https://falcao.org/posts/frontier-ai-better-cheaper-competition/<p>In early June, exactly two labs fielded a model scoring above 50 on the <a href="https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/four-frontier-launches-in-eight-days-six-labs-now-field-a-model-above-50-on-the-artificial-analysis-intelligence-index">Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index</a>. As of July 17, six do. Four frontier launches — Grok 4.5, GPT-5.6, Muse Spark 1.1, and Kimi K3 — landed inside a single eight-day window. The scores at the very top barely moved. The prices underneath them fell off a cliff.</p> <p>That is the story, and it is not another leaderboard coronation. Claude Fable 5 is still number one in that snapshot. Its lead is now one point. What actually changed in eight days is not who wears the crown — it is that near-frontier intelligence got 2–3x cheaper, from more suppliers, all at once. This is competition doing the one thing competition is supposed to do: deliver the same or better capability for less money and hand the leverage to whoever is holding the invoice.</p>