"2025 was about making AI smarter. 2026 will be about making AI faster. Intelligence without speed is intelligence without impact."
As we close out 2025 and look toward 2026, the AI landscape is undergoing a phase transition. The first wave of foundation models has crested. GPT-4, Claude-3, Gemini, and Llama have proven that machines can reason, create, and assist at superhuman levels. The question is no longer "Can AI do this?" but rather "Can AI do this fast enough?"
Model quality improvements are slowing. The jump from GPT-3 to GPT-4 was revolutionary. The jump from GPT-4 to GPT-5 will be evolutionary. Benchmark scores are approaching human ceiling on many tasks. The marginal utility of more parameters, more training data, and more compute is diminishing.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: a slightly dumber model that responds instantly will beat a genius model that takes 5 seconds. User studies consistently show that perceived intelligence correlates more strongly with response speed than with actual accuracy. Speed creates the illusion of competence.
ChatGPT goes mainstream. The world wakes up to generative AI.
Trillion-parameter models, multimodal capabilities, enterprise adoption.
Reasoning, coding, agents. AI becomes useful, not just impressive.
Infrastructure catch-up. Latency becomes the differentiator.
In 2026, the companies that win will not be the ones with the best models. They will be the ones with the fastest infrastructure. Model capabilities are rapidly commoditizing. The moat is shifting from algorithms to architecture—from what the model can do to how fast it can do it.
Speed is the new intelligence.
When every major provider offers GPT-4-class capabilities, the differentiator becomes who can serve them fastest. Infrastructure is the new product.
Infe was founded on this thesis. While others were racing to build bigger models, we focused on delivering them faster. While others optimized for benchmark performance, we optimized for real-world latency. As the market pivots to speed, we're already there.
2025 proved that AI is intelligent. 2026 will prove that intelligence needs to be instantaneous. Welcome to the Year of Speed.