The Great AI Model Mirage: Why Rippling’s Production Payroll Test Proves Cheap Models Beat Expensive Labs
Executive Overview In the fast-paced ecosystem of artificial intelligence, a dangerous and expensive consensus has quietly taken hold: to build world-class, enterprise-grade AI software, a company must continuously upgrade to the largest, most expensive foundation models on the market. For software executives, venture capitalists, and B2B founders, the default operational mode has been to chase…