I think the fast inference options have historically been only marginally more expensive then their slow cousins. There's a whole set of research about optimal efficiency, speed, and intelligence pareto curves. If you can deliver even an outdated low intelligence/old model at high efficiency, everyone will be interested. If you can deliver a model very fast, everyone will be interested. (If you can deliver a very smart model, everyone is obviously the most interested, but that's the free space.)
But to be clear, 1000 tokens/second is WAY better. Anthropic's Haiku serves at ~50 tokens per second.
But to be clear, 1000 tokens/second is WAY better. Anthropic's Haiku serves at ~50 tokens per second.