Home Speakers Nathan Lambert Quote The simple metric showing this is Hugging Face Downloads, where China took the lead in July of 2025 primarily through the success of Alibaba’s Qwen models.
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More from Nathan Lambert Blog The current balance of power in open models Sep 21, 2026
Since about April 2025, Chinese AI companies have been the clear leader in open-weight models. Blog Why I still haven't bought into true RSI Sep 19, 2026
I have my doubts that the labs can afford to spend a constant portion of this compute on internal R&D as the total volume goes up, especially with plans to IPO, as they face increased scrutiny on basic economics. Blog Why I still haven't bought into true RSI Sep 19, 2026
It is important to not confuse massive steps in inference-time scaling, a dynamic which should be fairly predictable, with being the outputs of RSI, which is highly uncertain. Blog Why I still haven't bought into true RSI Sep 19, 2026
The step from this anxiety, and incidents like OpenAI-HuggingFace, to extinction risks feels very religious. Blog When will average people feel AI's impact? Sep 9, 2026
For knowledge work, which is roughly half of the U.S. economy, AI is as fundamental as electricity (or quickly will be so, with rapid improvements to agents in the next 18 months). Blog When will average people feel AI's impact? Sep 9, 2026
If given 100 years to diffuse into society, its impacts will certainly become much more obvious, like the industrial revolutions of centuries past. Blog 6 months to live for open models Jul 12, 2026
Open models lack the central economic champion to represent the potential downside of action against them. Blog 6 months to live for open models Jul 12, 2026
The most serious test to date of open source AI’s viability is happening right now. Blog 6 months to live for open models Jul 12, 2026
The primary driver motivating regulation today is the inevitable truth that an open-weights model will soon reach the capabilities of Claude’s Mythos model.
On the same topics Podcast Dwarkesh Podcast: AI researchers debate how close we are to recursive self-improvement Sep 11, 2026
Basically anything that can be learned through RL can be distilled very easily, because it’s a small number of bits. Blog The Pulse: tech companies move to open AI models Sep 3, 2026
Cost-saving efforts reveal that moving simpler workloads to open AI models is the easiest way to save ~50% on AI bills. Blog Who's Afraid of Chinese Models? Jul 20, 2026
The long and short of it is this: marginal costs are back in a big way, both in terms of short-term implications of state-of-the-art free models, and in terms of the long-term structure of the industry. Essay The data black hole at the center of AI Jun 19, 2026
I think the reason it is relatively easy for open source and previous laggards to catch up to within months of the frontier is that data is the real driver of progress. Press Mistral AI and NVIDIA partner to accelerate open frontier models Mar 16, 2026
By shaping the capabilities of these systems from the ground up, we can help establish a global foundation for AI that empowers developers to build the next generation of applications. Press Mistral AI and NVIDIA partner to accelerate open frontier models Mar 16, 2026
Open frontier models are how AI becomes a true platform... About this quote 
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