EdgeRunner AI CEO Tyler Saltsman told Benzinga that artificial intelligence companies may be building far more computing power than they ultimately need. He characterized the current surge in data center demand as "a little overkill." Saltsman predicted that AI will become too expensive, leading to a drop in data center demand.

Saltsman believes the future of intelligence lies in specialized models working together rather than a single enormous system. He argued that "the world doesn't need AGI" and instead requires domain-specific models at the GPT-4 level. He noted that his company sells specialized on-device AI models.

Saltsman explained that EdgeRunner models are designed to run on consumer-grade hardware using 8GB to 16GB of video memory. After training in a data center, the models are compressed to run directly on a device without cloud requests. He suggested this approach could "completely undercut" the bottom line of large AI companies by removing recurring per-token charges.

Saltsman also cited competition from open-source models as a reason for calls by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to slow frontier AI development. He stated that open source is catching up and threatens the business models of large AI companies.

Regarding military applications, Saltsman said EdgeRunner builds smaller, military-specific models designed to run on soldiers' devices without an internet connection. He pointed to a recent incident where a faulty AI-assisted intelligence report wrongly identified a Chinese ship as carrying nuclear-related components. He claimed EdgeRunner reduced error rates by 37% in one training run using data from the Army's Artificial Intelligence Integration Center.

Saltsman stopped short of predicting weaker demand for Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA), praising its chips and CUDA software platform. Instead, he expects computing power to shift as companies match models more closely to individual tasks. He compared using massive frontier models for military mission planning to firing a $2 million Patriot missile at a $20,000 drone.

According to prediction-market data from Polymarket, traders give Nvidia a 78% chance of ending 2026 as the world's largest company, compared with Apple at 15%.