July 18 (Reuters) - ChatGPT maker OpenAI said on

Thursday it was launching GPT-4o mini, a cost-efficient small AI

model, aimed at making its technology more affordable and less

energy intensive, allowing the startup to target a broader pool

of customers.

Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed OpenAI, which is the market leader

in the AI software space, has been working to make it cheaper

and faster for developers to build applications based on its

model, at a time when deep-pocketed rivals like Meta

and Google rush to grab a bigger share in the market.

Priced at 15 cents per million input tokens and 60 cents per

million output tokens, the GPT-4o mini is more than 60% cheaper

than GPT-3.5 Turbo, OpenAI said.

It currently outperforms the GPT-4 model on chat preferences

and scored 82% on Massive Multitask Language Understanding

(MMLU), OpenAI said.

MMLU is a textual intelligence and reasoning benchmark used

to evaluate the capabilities of language models. A higher MMLU

score signifies it can understand and use language better across

a variety of domains, enhancing real-world usage.

The GPT-4o mini model's score compared with 77.9% for

Google's Gemini Flash and 73.8% for Anthropic's Claude Haiku,

according to OpenAI.

Smaller language models require less computational power to

run, making them a more affordable option for companies with

limited resources looking to deploy generative AI in their

operations.

ChatGPT's Free, Plus and Team users will be able to access

GPT-4o mini starting Thursday, in place of GPT-3.5 Turbo, with

enterprise users gaining access starting next week, OpenAI said.