Egress
Data leaving a cloud or region, typically billed at a premium and a major hidden cost in AI pipelines.
Current numbers
$0.05–0.12/GBcloud egress (2026 first tier $0.087–0.12/GB, tapering to ~$0.05/GB at the deepest volume tiers); ~240 TB LAION-5B ~$15,800 to move at AWS tiered rates; data gravity makes PB-scale datasets economically immovable
$0.087–0.12/GBfirst-tier internet egress (Azure ~$0.087, AWS ~$0.09, GCP Premium ~$0.12); cross-region/AZ extra; ~$90k to move 1 PB
70–80%egress share of total cloud storage bill for a standard weekly-retrain AI workload (74% AWS / 78% Azure / 79% GCP)