Stanford researcher: OpenAI spent $6.5M in compute to solve one math problem
Rishi Bommasani cites a $6.5 million bill for 130B Astra output tokens to argue the compute divide has spread from training and evaluation to model use, pushing universities out of frontier research.
University leaders should make sure they reason about the broader trend. Around 2020, Fei-Fei and others at Stanford identified the growing compute divide between industry and academia, and the need for policy response in pushing for the National Research Cloud. In 2021, the same point was made when applied to model training in the foundation models paper. In 2022, the same point was made when applied to model evaluation in HELM among other works. In 2026, the same point was made when applied to model use. OpenAI spent more than $6.5 million to resolve Navier Stokes (Astra prices for 130B output tokens only). The stakes are not just the academic computer scientists doing frontier research on how to build AI models. The stakes are about the whole university system doing frontier research. Coping with "scarcity is the mother of invention" won't cut it, and we should trust the "godmother of AI" on that.
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