Inside Frontier LLM Training: Stages, Costs, and Checkpoints

Logosofia no Dia a Dia · Apr 18, 2026 · 26m

What does it really take to train a frontier large language model? This episode breaks down the multi-stage process, from foundational pretraining to supervised fine-tuning and RLHF. Learn why checkpoints are the backbone of cost efficiency, how labs manage catastrophic forgetting, and why post-training is orders of magnitude cheaper than pretraining. We explore the mechanics of each stage, the staggering costs involved, and why understanding these distinctions is crucial for evaluating model capabilities and safety claims. Episode 2307 — myweirdprompts.com/n/2307 (permanent short link…