How Do Chinese Open Models Help Companies in the West?

Misha Laskin says companies in the West have built more durable businesses because a great open-model ecosystem came from China, and he calls that a gift. A world where that ecosystem never arrived is a world with no open models.

An application builder who makes something great can watch the work get pulled into a closed model provider, because that provider is a business that has to generate revenue. He calls that a tall poppy syndrome. Open models are what let those companies keep what they built.

He does not want compute concentrated in one or two closed labs. Ten or twenty closed labs would still be a competitive ecosystem. One or two is scarier.