Phase 0: Platforms & Inference Economics · ~60 minutes · Python (stdlib · toy per-call economics comparator)
Inference Platform Economics — Fireworks, Together, Baseten, Modal, Replicate, Anyscale
The 2026 inference market is no longer GPU time rental.
Hiring signal: Can operate inference platform economics in production
What you will learn
- Name the three market segments (custom silicon, GPU platforms, API-first) and map each vendor to a segment.
- Explain why the "per-token" API pricing model compresses toward the serving engine's cost curve, not the hardware's.
- Compute effective cost per request across at least three vendors and explain when per-minute (Baseten, Modal) beats per-token.
- Identify which platform is the right default for a given workload (serverless bursty, steady high-throughput, fine-tuned variants, multimodal).
Introduction
It bifurcates into custom silicon (Groq, Cerebras, SambaNova), GPU platforms (Baseten, Together, Fireworks, Modal), and API-first marketplaces (Replicate, DeepInfra). Fireworks raised price $1/hr per GPU on May 1, 2026, and $4B valuation on 10T+ tokens/day tells you the volume-driven model works. Baseten closed $300M Series E at $5B in January 2026. The competitive positioning rule is simple: Fireworks optimizes latency, Together optimizes catalog breadth, Baseten optimizes enterprise polish, Modal optimizes Python-native DX, Replicate optimizes multimodal reach, Anyscale optimizes distributed Python. This lesson gives you a matrix you can hand a founder.
Type: Learn Languages: Python (stdlib, toy per-call economics comparator) Prerequisites: Phase 17 · 01 (Managed LLM Platforms), Phase 17 · 04 (Serving Engine Internals) Time: ~60 minutes
Objective
Learning objectives
- Name the three market segments (custom silicon, GPU platforms, API-first) and map each vendor to a segment.
- Explain why the "per-token" API pricing model compresses toward the serving engine's cost curve, not the hardware's.
- Compute effective cost per request across at least three vendors and explain when per-minute (Baseten, Modal) beats per-token.
- Identify which platform is the right default for a given workload (serverless bursty, steady high-throughput, fine-tuned variants, multimodal).
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