Why not put a proxy in front of the model, give each candidate a key with a hard budget, and revoke it after? If you require AI for the interview, you should pay for it

With the added benefit that you can monitor it and review the cost and usage patterns of the candidates vs the result, maybe even get some cool evals.

Which tools have made that leap? Faster design iteration makes sense, but what points to exponential hardware gains rather than shorter development cycles?