Venture Capitalist at Theory

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2 minute read / May 16, 2023 /

Which AI Model Should You Pick for Your Startup?

A product manager today faces a key architectural question with AI : to use a small language model or a large language model?

The pace of innovation in the field clouds the answer. Each day, researchers publish novel findings on performance, discover new techniques to implement, & surface new challenges to wrestle with.

This is my current mental model of when to choose a large or small model :

When to choose a large model :

When to choose a small model?

There’s a third option : MLOps businesses offer managed infrastructure with running small-language models, providing simpler management, reduced operating expense, but with the freedom of smaller models.

As the nascent market matures, customers will elect their preferred deployment option. Today, it’s too early to predict which approach will capture the majority of spend & which infrastructure choice suits different use cases best.

We can say though that managed large-language models have a head start, as Microsoft earning showed with its $900m ARR AI business.


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