There is a performance difference between spawning and placing AI into a level. This is causing issues when spawning/despawning AI actors in a large open world, where 4-5ms of frame time quickly builds up to a huge performance cost.
This was reported and tested in 4.21.1 (CL-4613538). This was reproduced in 4.20.3 (CL-4369336) and Main 4.22(CL-4691389)
Don't run any AI behavior that pathfinds, lets just measure the static cost of the actors existing in the world
or
Results: The InclusiveAvg/Max for the components will go from a value less than .11ms to a value thats 4 - 6ms higher
Expected: The InclusiveAvg/Max value won't change from when an AI is placed vs spawned
There's no existing public thread on this issue, so head over to Questions & Answers just mention UE-68207 in the post.