London-based startup Double, founded by Meryem Arik, is taking on the AI industry's biggest players with a bold mission: making AI inference 100x cheaper every year. With just 11 employees, the company is carving out a reputation as a scrappy undercutting force in a market dominated by firms with thousands of staff and billions in funding.

The AI inference market has become fiercely competitive as enterprises demand affordable access to large language models at scale. Double's aggressive pricing strategy positions it as a serious threat to established providers, offering dramatically lower costs that could reshape how businesses budget for AI workloads.

For investors, Double represents a compelling case study in capital efficiency. An 11-person team competing against companies with hundreds of millions in funding signals that infrastructure innovation may matter more than sheer scale. If Double delivers on its pricing promises, larger incumbents could face serious margin pressure across the AI inference stack.