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A twin-dial comparator instrument on a bench between a device-tier rack of boxed phones and a wheeled cart carrying a slice of server rack, its two needles caught overlapping at the same reading

The Real Economics of Shipping a Model to a Device

Distilling a small model can cost less than a laptop. Everything that comes after the training run — a build for every device tier, QA across the fleet, and an update channel that never stops billing — is where the real invoice for on-device AI gets written.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 23, 2026 · 16 min read

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