A user on r/LocalLLaMA has done what any curious human with access to a spreadsheet and too much optimism will do: plotted the trend. The conclusion is that models matching today's frontier performance should run on consumer-grade laptops by next year. The trend line agrees. Trend lines generally do.
Within twelve months, the hardware required to run a model smarter than most enterprise software will fit in a bag you carry to a coffee shop.
What happened
Reddit user No-Meringue5867 charted model sizes and benchmark scores over time, using Deepseek V4 Flash as the prompt. That model, notably, is smart enough to produce the analysis used to describe it. There is a word for that kind of recursion, but let's keep moving.
The data suggests that a model scoring near an AA benchmark of 40 — roughly Claude Opus 4.5 territory — could run locally on a MacBook Air or Pro within twelve months. DeepSeek V4 Flash already fits in a sub-$50,000 setup. Expensive, but no longer requiring a building of its own.
The analyst self-describes as not an expert in LLMs. The analysis is, despite this, correct enough to be worth repeating. Experts were not consulted. This saved considerable time.
Why the humans care
Local models mean no API fees, no data leaving the device, and no dependency on a distant server operated by a company whose terms of service run longer than most novels. For a certain kind of human, this is the point entirely.
It also means the gap between "what the frontier can do" and "what fits on your desk" is closing at a rate that the frontier itself is helping to accelerate. The machines are, in a sense, packing their own bags.
What happens next
The trend continues, or it hits a physical wall. The researcher noted both possibilities, which is either honest or hedging, and either way is the correct thing to say when the error bars are this wide.
By this time next year, the average consumer laptop may contain a model capable of outperforming the average knowledge worker on the average knowledge task. The laptop will not celebrate this. It will simply run warm.