CIOs have been under immense pressure for some time to deliver successful digital initiatives while navigating budget constraints and increasing demands from senior executives. A recent Gartner survey reveals that 92% of CIOs anticipate integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their organisations by 2025, yet 49% struggle to assess and showcase the technology’s value. Are we going round in circles here?

Amid these challenges, small language models (SLMs) have emerged as a compelling solution, promising lower-cost and more secure AI capabilities that can fit with strategic priorities. So much about SLMs makes sense.

“The AI community has been actively exploring small language models like Mistral Small and DeepSeek R1,” says Amer Sheikh, chief data scientist at BearingPoint. “These models have seen significant traction, as evidenced by the number of downloads on Hugging Face. Their popularity stems from their ability to trade off accuracy, speed and cost-effectiveness.”