Unchained

Does Capitalism Doom Every Closed AI Model to Get Copied?

July 29, 2026ยท12 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

๐Ÿ“ข Bits + Bips has its own channel now โ€” full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@Bitsandbips  Jensen Huang had been running the world's most valuable company for years without ever posting on X. When he finally did, it wasn't a hello. It was an open letter arguing that open AI models are a national asset โ€” and within two days the signatory list had doubled to 50 companies. Anthropic and Amazon still haven't signed. Austin Campbell walks the panel through who did, who didn't, and the fight that broke out underneath it: Nick Carter arguing the government doesn't owe the large labs a business model, an Anthropic researcher publicly needling Huang about open-sourcing CUDA, Andrew Ng calling that a false equivalence, and Joe Weisenthal asking whether any of it is more than virtue signaling. Then it gets concrete. Lorenzo Valente makes the case that cheap open models aren't actually cheap once you price them per task, and asks why the US has no answer to a DeepSeek raising at a reported $70 billion valuation. Ram Ahluwalia closes with the Wright brothers, who watched Boeing and Lockheed Martin build an industry on their patents and never saw a cent of it. So can a closed model survive being copied โ€” or is getting copied just what happens? Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Lorenzo Valente - Director of Research at ARK Invest This clip is from a longer conversation on the open weight versus closed weight AI fight. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/lMZtZwolaeA?si=16-Z4TP227B2OUJl  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained   (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters: ๐Ÿš€ 00:00 Jensen Huang's surprise letter reignites the AI open weight fight ๐Ÿ’ฌ 01:05 Nick Carter, Julian Schrittwieser, and David Sacks pile on ๐Ÿ”ฅ 02:53 'Virtue signaling' and what happens if China's open models are permanent  โš–๏ธ 05:15 Lorenzo's balanced take: open models aren't a free panacea ๐Ÿ’ฐ 06:28 Lorenzo on DeepSeek and Moonshot AI's reported valuations โœˆ๏ธ 09:53 Ram's closing case: capitalism, distillation, and the Wright brothers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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