Glowing compact node network representing small language model efficiency against deep blue background

Small Language Models Are Eating the World

Small language models like Phi-3, Gemma, and Llama 3.1 8B are matching frontier model performance on 70–80% of enterprise AI tasks, at a fraction of the cost. This analysis delivers benchmark data, a total cost of ownership model, and a decision framework for knowing exactly when to deploy an SLM versus a frontier LLM..