Ben Horowitz: The Fight Over Open Source AI

Ben Horowitz: The Fight Over Open Source AI – The a16z Show

Market views

Bullish

OPENSOURCE— Open source AI is essential for innovation, safety, and preventing monopolies. The AI market is less than 3% penetrated with room for massive growth across all players including open source models.
NVDA— Jensen Huang created a Twitter account specifically to publish and support the open source AI letter, demonstrating NVIDIA's strong commitment to keeping AI open and supporting the ecosystem.
TSLA— Tesla has demonstrated superior automated manufacturing capability through the Gigafactory, positioning it well for the third industrial revolution focused on AI-centric automated factories.
AIAPPS— AI application companies universally benefit from open source models for cost efficiency and avoiding platform risk. Open source enables a healthy ecosystem where apps can build without fear of being undercut by proprietary model providers.

Bearish

ANTHROPIC— Anthropic is pushing to ban open source AI for competitive reasons while using an aggressive monopolistic playbook - entering application categories, subsidizing their own apps while charging competitors full price, and refusing to work with the US government.
AIMONOPOLY— A monopoly in AI represents a major national security risk and would be catastrophic for the application ecosystem. Single company control over AI would be dangerous and powerful.

Not investment advice.