Epoch AI is a research institute dedicated to investigating the key trends and issues that will shape the trajectory and governance of artificial intelligence, conducting society-benefiting research on the development path of AI.
Main capabilities and research directions: According to information on its official website, Epoch AI tracks and publishes quantitative indicators for multiple key AI trends, including:
- Model capabilities: Since the emergence of reasoning models, the ECI frontier has improved by 14 points per year.
- Compute stock growth: Total AI chip compute is growing 3.4x per year, doubling every 6.8 months, and increasing by 0.53 OOMs per year.
- Training compute: Since 2020, the training compute of frontier language models has grown 5x per year, doubling every 5.2 months, and increasing by 0.7 OOMs per year; gigawatt-scale data centers can be built in about 2 years.
- Largest AI data center: The compute of the largest known AI data center is equivalent to 1.1 million NVIDIA H100 chips.
- Chip price-performance: Since 2023, AI chip performance per dollar has grown 49% per year, doubling every 1.7 years, and increasing by 0.17 OOMs per year.
Data and databases: Epoch AI provides an open AI data center database that uses satellite and licensed data to show AI compute, power usage, and construction timelines. The official website also shows that it tracks more than 3,200 machine learning models (from 1950 to the present), model performance on key benchmarks, an open database of large AI data centers, chip shipments and revenue, and other data snapshots. Its estimates are inferred based on revenue data, other financial disclosures, and analyst reports, and data coverage differs by manufacturer; for example, data for Nvidia and Google begins in 2022, while that for other manufacturers begins in 2024.
How to use and applicable scenarios: Users can obtain its research results, databases, and weekly commentary on AI news and progress through the official website. Epoch AI states that its team provides custom research and consulting services, suitable for institutions or organizations that need deeper insights. Its data and independent research are cited by leading publications and institutions and trusted by leaders at OpenAI, DeepMind, and governments around the world.
Limitations: The official website does not provide specific product pricing, prices, platform requirements, or detailed usage steps; this information is not currently available. Data coverage varies by manufacturer, and some estimates are based on inference, which may have limitations.
