Epoch AI's October 2026 Brief Covers AI Agents, Falling Costs, and China's Chip Exposure

Epoch AI estimates the AI chips shipped through 2027 could support about 30 to 170 million concurrent frontier-model agents, or nearly 2 billion with cheaper models. Its researchers find the cost of a fixed level of AI performance has fallen about 47% per quarter over the past three years. The newsletter also reports China's semiconductor supply-chain exposure is 2.7 times that of the US.