TBC's mischief 1 claims 5x faster AI video at half a cent per second

TBC, as the San Francisco company is known, built mischief 1 on Wan 2.2, an open-weight video model. It says the result matches Wan 2.2's quality while generating video five times faster.

A fivefold speed claim, at half a cent per second

Pricing starts at half a cent per second of output, which puts a five-second clip at 2.5 cents and 100 clips at $2.50. The model is live on fal and OpenRouter, and TBC says it is the lowest-priced image-to-video model on both marketplaces.

The company describes the gain as a thin optimization layer rather than a new foundation model. It adds less than 0.1% to the base model's parameter count, and customers run it on standard AI hardware. Output is modest, at 3 or 5 second clips in 480p or 720p, 16 frames per second, delivered as MP4.

Cheap per-second pricing is the pitch. Independent evidence for the speed claim is not yet public.

"We said we would take discoveries from living neurons all the way to a product anyone can use, and we did it faster than anyone expected," said Alex Ksendzovsky, TBC's CEO and co-founder.

What the neurons did, and what the evidence shows

TBC grows living neurons in the lab, measures how they process information and turns the principles it finds into software. The neurons stay in the lab; what ships is code that runs on ordinary accelerators.

The framing has invited confusion, and the coverage is consistent on one point: nobody is generating video on a dish of brain cells. What TBC sells is an efficiency layer on top of an existing model, and the biological work sits upstream. TNW pointed out that TBC has not published independent tests backing the fivefold speed claim, a gap that shapes how the launch should be read, shattered.io noted. An AWS Marketplace listing is marked coming soon, following the AWS partnership TBC announced on 22 September 2026. No funding amount or investor list appears in the launch materials.

Jon Pomeraniec, TBC's co-founder and COO, framed the launch as a proof of method. "Our first model shows what happens when we learn from biology instead of relying on conventional inference optimization alone," he said.

Wonder Studios, an AI-native creative studio, tested the model in its own production workflow. "mischief 1's speed and cost-effectiveness meant we could push the work much further within the same time and more cost effectively," said co-founder Justin Hackney in TBC's announcement.

Free credits and cheaper APIs widen the field

The same week brought cheaper access elsewhere. AIVideoFree said on 30 October that new users' sign-up credits work on all 12 of its video models, including Veo, Kling and Seedance. Videos carry no watermark, credits do not expire and commercial use is included.

Extra credits sell in one-time packs from $6.90 for 600 credits, and annual plans start at $7.40 per month, billed yearly. No credit card is required, though the number of free credits varies by country, and the credit cost of each generation is shown before it starts. On 28 October, B.AI added ByteDance's Seedance series to its API. Seedance 2.5 handles runs up to 30 seconds at 1080p 10-bit and up to 50 reference assets. Meta gives away an AI video generator inside its Meta AI app and on meta.ai. It runs on Movie Gen, a 30-billion-parameter model that makes 1080p clips up to 16 seconds at 16 frames per second.

Meta's free tier comes with a feed attached. Vibes launched on 25 September 2025, and Meta AI app downloads rose 56% month over month to about 3.9 million by mid-October 2025, Fello AI reported.

AIVideoFree still restricts content: material involving minors, sexual or nude depictions of real people without consent, impersonation for fraud and illegal content are not permitted, and some models apply their providers' own safety filters.

What buyers can compare

Specifications diverge sharply. TBC's 3 to 5 second clips at 480p or 720p sit below Meta's 1080p, 16-second Movie Gen output and below Seedance 2.0's 4K 10-bit support.

AIVideoFree's free tier spans 12 video models, while TBC sells a single model through two marketplaces. Comparing prices directly is awkward. TBC quotes half a cent per second of output, while AIVideoFree sells 600 credits for $6.90 without publishing a per-second rate, so the two meter usage differently. B.AI's Seedance 2.0 Fast targets the same low-resolution, high-volume work, generating at 480p or 720p for ad variants and storyboard iteration.

Buyers who need volume and price can test more takes per dollar. Buyers who need resolution and length still have to look elsewhere.

What the market has not settled is whether speed claims survive contact with production workloads.

What happens next

TBC says it is already applying its discovery process to newer open-weight video models, with early results showing greater efficiency gains. It has also said it is working on language models and physical AI.

The AWS Marketplace listing for mischief 1 is marked coming soon, with no date given. Until independent benchmarks appear, the fivefold figure remains a vendor number.