--- title: "Frontier: what it means · The AI Compute Race · DRYBURGH" source: https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/frontier description: "Frontier: The leading edge of AI capability, and the models and laboratories at it. Chapter 1." --- # Frontier What does “Frontier” mean? FrontierThe leading edge of AI capability, and the models and laboratories at it. *Chapter 1.* From *The AI Compute Race*. [Read the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#buy) ## Where the book uses it - [Chapter 1 — The Stakes](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes/chapter-1)What the race is for: the belief that a lead in AI can compound into a lasting advantage, how long such leads have actually lasted, and what a trillion dollars a year is being bet against. ## Where the record uses it - Campus [Stargate Shackelford / Frontier](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger/stargate-shackelford-frontier) - Scorecard indicator [Post-2024 METR horizon doubling time](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard#row-3) - Scorecard indicator [China-to-US frontier lag](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard#row-10) - Dated test [Chapter 7, the frontier’s deployment, due 31 December 2027](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests#2027-15) - Dated test [Chapters 1 and 12, the first route, due 31 August 2028](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests#2028-1) - Dated test [Chapter 2, compute moved rather than stopped, due 31 March 2029](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests#2029-1) ## Sources that use it - Google DeepMind, *Frontier Safety Framework* 3.0, 22 September 2025 (“We recommend Security level 4 for this capability threshold [machine-learning R&D automation level 1], but emphasize that this must be taken on by the frontier AI field as a whole”; a 3.1 revision followed; “In practice, our overall security posture may commonly exceed the baseline levels recommended here”). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#deepmind-fsf3) - Google DeepMind, *Frontier Safety Framework* 3.1, published 17 April 2026 (“We recommend Security level 4 for this capability threshold, but emphasize that this must be taken on by the frontier AI field as a whole”, p. 15, for ML R&D automation level 1; “In practice, our overall security posture may commonly exceed the baseline levels recommended here”, p. 11; the version’s change log, p. 17, lists CBRN thresholds, a combined ML R&D and Misalignment risk domain and Security Level 2+ for the CBRN, cyber and harmful-manipulation levels, and does not list the level-4 recommendation among its changes). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#deepmind-fsf31) - Moonshot AI, “Kimi K3 Tech Blog: Open Frontier Intelligence,” Kimi blog, July 2026 (“Pricing is $0.30/MTok for cache-hit input, $3.00/MTok for cache-miss input, and $15.00/MTok for output”, that is, $3 and $15 per million tokens of input and output; the post prints no date of its own, gives its benchmark scores as “current as of July 16, 2026” and promises the full weights “by July 27, 2026”; Moonshot’s API price card, “Model Inference Pricing Explanation,” Kimi API Platform, listed the same $0.30, $3.00 and $15.00 for kimi-k3 on 20 September 2026, with cache-write prices of $3.00 and $6.00 that the post does not give; read live 20 September 2026). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#kimi-k3-pricing) - NVIDIA, “NVIDIA Vera Rubin Opens Agentic AI Frontier,” keynote press release, 16 March 2026 (it does not carry the live blog’s figure — its three uses of “trillion” are all “trillion-parameter”). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#nvidia-vera-rubin-pr-mar26) - OpenAI, “GPT-5.6: Frontier intelligence that scales with your ambition,” 9 July 2026, with the post’s update lines of 30 July and 21 August 2026 (“Sol is $5 input / $30 output”; “Update on August 21, 2026: OpenAI dropped the API and credit pricing of GPT-5.6 Sol by over 20% for the next 3 months”; the launch page’s multi-agent chart, SEC-Bench Pro at the max reasoning setting, read from its embedded spec on 10 October 2026: 71.4% at $15.47 a task with one agent, 74.3% at $32.41 with four, 76.2% at $65.86 with sixteen). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#wiki-gpt56) And 19 more: [search the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources). ## Related terms - [Advanced packaging](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/advanced-packaging) - [AISI](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/aisi) - [Clocks of diffusion](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/clocks-of-diffusion) - [Foundry](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/foundry) - [General-purpose technology](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/general-purpose-technology) - [Island, the](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/island-the) - [TSMC](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/tsmc) - [Algorithmic efficiency](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/algorithmic-efficiency) - [Application layer](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/application-layer) - [Arsenal behind every arsenal](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/arsenal-behind-every-arsenal) - [Capital expenditure](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/capital-expenditure) - [Cluster](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/cluster) From the glossary of The AI Compute Race. - [Campuses](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger) - [Tests](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests) - [Scorecard](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard) - [Data](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/data/releases) - [Chapter by chapter](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/companion) - [The record at a glance](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/observatory) - [The machine](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/machine) - [One campus, four futures](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/hyperion) - [Glossary](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary) - [People](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/people) - [Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources) - [Notes](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes) - [Where the book was wrong](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/corrections) - [Where its sources were wrong](https://dryburgh.com/corrections?book=vol1) - [The Paper](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/paper) - [Consent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/consent) - [Who builds and pays](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/parties) *The AI Compute Race: Five Races, One Machine* is a book by Lee S. Dryburgh, the first volume of THE COMPUTE ECONOMY, published by Dryburgh, an imprint of Contestra OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia; its record closes on 8 November 2026. [About the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1)[Tell me when it is out](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#notify)