TechCrunch Desktop Logo TechCrunch Mobile Logo LatestStartupsVentureAppleSecurityAIAppsDisrupt 2026 EventsPodcastsNewsletters SearchSubmit Site Search Toggle Mega Menu Toggle Topics Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture More from TechCrunch Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Contact Us Image Credits:M. Reinerston/The Photo Group / Flickr (opens in a new window) under a CC BY 2.0 (opens in a new window) license. AI Writer introduces new AI model and upgraded harness to contain token costs Russell Brandom 2:13 PM PDT · August 13, 2026 Across the AI industry, users are becoming more conscious of just how expensive their deployments can be —and feeling a new urgency to cut costs. But while open source models offer significantly lower per-token costs, it can be difficult to find the right model for a given job. On Thursday, Writer, which offers AI tools and agents for marketers, launched a new flagship model called Palmyra X6, aimed at solving that problem for its users. Built as a post-training variation on Z.ai’s open source model GLM-5.2, Writer says the new system should provide deployment-ready capabilities at a much lower price. The company estimates the new model, combined with changes to the companies harness infrastructure, will cut costs for its customers by as much as 50% for basic tasks. Together with the new model, the company also released significant upgrades to its standard agentic harness. Both features will be available to Writer clients starting Thursday. “I think the enterprise is absolutely sick of chasing the next benchmark,” CEO May Habib told TechCrunch. “They want flattening cost, and it seems like nobody can deliver that.” The new approach puts particular emphasis on complex, multi-step tasks, executed faster and with fewer tokens. And Writer sees harness optimization as a crucial lever toward making that happen. A recent paper from Writer researchers lends credence to this approach, testing small changes in harness efficiency across multiple different models. The research found that, in many cases, changes in the harness were a more reliable way to reduce costs than model choice, with costs falling an average of 40% across their testing. “The harness is the one component whose efficiency multiplies across every model an organization runs—present and future,” the researchers wrote. var playerInstance_jwplayer_6a7e43d1a42b9 = jwplayer( "jwplayer_6a7e43d1a42b9" ); playerInstance_jwplayer_6a7e43d1a42b9.setup(); For Writer’s clients, the experience is still model-agnostic: Palmyra X6 will sit alongside other Writer models or outside models imported through Azure or Amazon Bedrock. But Habib also sees the push to cut costs as driving a broader distrust toward major AI labs, which have a financial incentive to drive up token use. “The cost explosion here is just unprecedented for customers, and so is the degree to which CIOs are giving up on the labs,” Habib told TechCrunch, adding that the AI labs “don’t deeply understand right how to help an enterprise get benefit from AI.” Topics AI, writer, Z.ai When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Russell Brandom AI Editor Russell Brandom has been covering the tech industry since 2012, with a focus on platform policy and emerging technologies. He previously worked at The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at 412-401-5489. View Bio October 13 – 15 San Francisco Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you.Save up to $300 today! REGISTER NOW Most Popular Some Claude users are mad that Anthropic’s new watermarks will catch them using it at their jobs, classes Lucas Ropek Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni reportedly knew Phia was ‘cookie stuffing’ for months Dominic-Madori Davis Delta investigating after someone set up fake Wi-Fi network mid-flight Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai Anthropic says it will watermark text generated by its AI models Ivan Mehta Mark Zuckerberg’s AI manifesto is exactly why people don’t like AI Russell Brandom YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money Aisha Malik This ‘adversarial’ pattern can prevent surveillance cameras from detecting you Zack Whittaker Loading the next article Error loading the next article X LinkedIn Facebook Instagram youTube Mastodon Threads Bluesky TechCrunchStaffContact UsAdvertiseSite Map Terms of ServicePrivacy PolicyRSS Terms of UseCode of Conduct Made by GooglePhiaBlacksmithPixel TagDisrupt 2026Tech LayoffsChatGPT © 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC.
