Embodiments of this application relate to the field of communication technologies, and provide a split inference method and an apparatus, to reduce communication overheads and also reduce a risk of leaking original data to a central server. The method includes: A first communication apparatus receives, from a second communication apparatus, first indication information indicating a previous-hop communication apparatus and a next-hop communication apparatus of the first communication apparatus, where the previous-hop communication apparatus and the next-hop communication apparatus each include at least one terminal device. The first communication apparatus receives data from the previous-hop communication apparatus, performs inference on the data based on a submodel corresponding to the first communication apparatus, to obtain an inference result, and sends the inference result to the next-hop communication apparatus.