[vineyardmike]

Google has used LMs in search for years (just not trendy LLMs), and search is famously optimized to the millisecond. Visa uses LMs to perform fraud detection every time someone makes a transaction, which is also quite latency sensitive. I'm guessing "informed folks" aren't so informed about the broader market.

OpenAI and Anthropic's APIs are obviously not latency-driven. Same with comparable LLM API resellers like Azure. Most people are likely not expecting tight latency SLOs there. That said, chat experiences (esp. voice ones) would probably be even more valuable if they could react in "human time" instead of with few seconds delay.

Integrating specialized hardware that can shave inference to fractions of a second seems like something that could be useful in a variety of latency-sensitive opportunities. Especially if this allows larger language models to be used where traditionally they were too slow.

[metadat]

I wish things were so simple!

Reducing latency doesn't automatically translate to winning the market or even increased revenue. There are tons of other variables such as functionality, marketing, back-office sales deals and partnerships. Lots of times, users can't even tell which service is objectively better (even though you and I have the know how and tools to measure and better know reality).

Unfortunately the technical angle is only one piece of the puzzle.