How Small Models Can Make a Big Impact for Enterprises
Cohere, Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026
Cohere explains where small language models beat frontier models for enterprises and how to build a small model strategy.
Cohere makes the enterprise case for small language models, covering the benefits smaller models bring on cost, latency and deployability.
The post describes how enterprises actually use them in production, typically for well-scoped, high-volume tasks where a frontier model's generality is not required. It then sets out what to consider when building a small model strategy, including where distillation and fine-tuning pay off.
The framing is that model size should follow the task rather than default to the largest available.