The leading AIs from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic essentially teach themselves from the ground up with huge amounts of raw data—a process that typically takes many months and tens of millions of dollars or more. By drawing on the results of such work, distillation can create a model that is almost as good in a matter of weeks or even days, for substantially less money. Source: Why ‘Distillation’ Has Become the Scariest Word for AI Companies