Angelina YangFounder and Host, TwoSetAI · AI builder for visibility and discoverability

$3 vs $18: The Real Cost of AI Training Data

6 Dec 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:46

Angelina Yang compares data labeling costs at $3 versus $18 per item, arguing that unit price misses the real picture. Her labels needed no additional QC in testing, but total cost of ownership includes downstream work and data readiness that cheaper options often skip.

Questions this video answers

Competition quoted $3 apiece; speaker/firm quoted $18 apiece.

At least 5%.

Chapters

So when we, when we talk to customers like it always comes up the question of cost. And we never talk about cost. We always talk about tco, total cost of ownership. Right? What does that mean instead of thinking about it, how much are you going to pay me for this individual piece of data to be labeled? We talk about how much is it going to cost you for this using us versus using someone else? How much is it going to cost you for this specific piece of data to be ready to be used by the mock? We quoted $18 apiece for, for the competition, quoted $3. We did the POC. We ran a little bit of volume through the customer, came to the conclusion that with us, statistically speaking they didn't have to QC or QA anything. They could just throw it straight into the model. But they were going to qa. But we require them to QA or QC at least 5% anyways.