Frontier Model Cost and Open-Weights Popularity is Driving Demand for Model Routing
Latent Space Richard MacManus
Glean, an enterprise AI platform, has become a major player in model routing — automatically selecting the most cost-effective AI model for each task — as frontier models grow expensive and open-weight alternatives gain traction. The company reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue this year and claims its routing system delivers 4x cost savings compared to using Claude alone, by directing simpler queries to cheaper models and reserving expensive frontier models for complex work. This shift reflects a broader enterprise trend away from reliance on single AI providers toward multi-model strategies that include open-source options, driven primarily by the need to control spiraling AI costs.
Why it matters
Glean CEO Arvind Jain explains why model routing helps control AI costs for organizations, and how human feedback loops at scale improve its routing systems.