O4-mini is much more than another model of AI. It is the Tesla Model 3 of OpenAI

The last launch of OpenAI, the models O3 and O4-minihe says much more about his strategy than he seems to the naked eye. The greatness of this proposal-especially that of O4-mini-is not in Benchmarks nor in technical capacities, which also; but in the tactic that raises and that Remember a lot to which he made Tesla In a giant:

1. First came Model sa luxury product that demonstrated what was possible, but accessible to few. 80,000 dollars.
2. Then came Model 3surprisingly powerful but at a price that greatly expanded the market. 35,000 dollars, less than half than Model S but maintaining 80% of its key benefits.

With O3 and O4-mini, OpenAi has executed a very similar movement for the world of AI.

• O4-mini costs just 1.1 dollars per million Tokens input and $ 4.4 per million departure.
• And offers a performance that rivals his older brother: 68.1% in Swe-Bench compared to 69.1% of O3which costs almost ten times more.

This price-reference equation is no accident, but the aforementioned strategy that we have seen before. A “economic” product that democratizes premium capabilities and expands its potential market.

O4-mini exceeds Claude 3.7 Sonnet (62.3% in Swe-Bench) costing much less. It is the best model in Aime 2024 and 2025 (elite mathematical contests) surpassing even major systems.

Tesla analogy is reinforced when we see that O4-mini allows a user of Chatgpt plus ($ 20 per month) access capacities that previously required Pro subscriptions (200 per month) or Enterprise (thousands).

And the master coup comes from integration. O4-mini is the first “mini” model capable of using all chatgpt tools: web navigation, run python code, analyze images and generate them. With a single affordable model, Openai is absorbing use cases for which several specialized suppliers had to be paid.

Concrete examples:

• A startup that makes slate diagrams analysis for $ 50 per month, now competes against a system that does the same for $ 20 per month, and also solves mathematics, program and seeks information.
• Another that sells assisted programming tools for $ 30 per month faces an O4-mini that writes better code and also visualizes data.

This explains Why Openai released O4-mini when Initially he had announced that would integrate this technology directly into GPT-5. The competitive pressure of Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Grok 3 He forced them to accelerate and have shown that they are willing to cannibalize their own premium products to maintain their dominant position. This reminds what Apple did with the iPod: it was not afraid to integrate it into the iPhone knowing that in a five years It would evaporate what generated 40% of its income. Advance or die.

The key difference between O4-mini and alternatives such as Claude is very clear: while others offer larger models that consume more resources, OpenAi has achieved a compact model with sufficient performance for almost any practical task.

In the same way as the Model 3 It did not need autonomy for 600 kilometers when 350 were enough for the majority, O4-mini does not need the last 5% precision when it already solves 95% of everyday problems.

It is not just a technological strategy, but of scale economy: With each new user, the marginal cost decreases while the competitive advantage increases. And as Tesla, when the competition tries to react by copying its approach, Openai is already announcing its next movement.

Of course, as is happening to Tesla, The Chinese threat In the medium term it is unpredictable.

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Outstanding image | OpenAI, Xataka with Mockuuuups Studio