# Epoch AI report finds steep decline in cost of benchmark performance

_Published Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 1:30 PM EDT · AI, Products · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

![Triangle as a weighing scale — Primary](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/uDe5V9DftAJYbZae7cTwQU-2400-80.png)

A report from Epoch AI finds that the cost of reaching a specified performance level on AI tests has fallen rapidly, with its headline measure declining by just under 50% per quarter. The measure tracks the cost of answering a question while meeting an 81.25% threshold on the GPQA Diamond test.

The finding describes the price of performance on selected benchmarks, not the cost of every AI workload. Data before 2023 were extrapolated, and Epoch found different rates of improvement across the other tests it examined.

## Sources

- [Tom's Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/the-price-of-ai-is-crashing-faster-than-the-rate-of-moores-law-report-suggests-intelligence-costs-are-in-freefall-outpacing-comparative-technologies-like-compute-dna-sequencing-and-lithium-batteries)

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Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/zRYsK4HH-Al6ThcX_1gJ8D
Published: 2026-09-30T17:30:24.849Z
Story chronology: 2026-09-30T12:40:00.000Z
Retrieved: 2026-09-30T19:34:42.997Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)