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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) · Saturday, July 25, 2026

McCord CTO: Open Source Models Don't Cannibalize Core Business, But Raise the Floor

Osvald Nitzky, CPO at McCord, stated that open source model improvements do not cannibalize their core business. He explained that data is most valuable at the frontier of model performance, and open models simply raise the baseline of what customers are interested in, allowing McCord to continue growing by serving new capabilities.

personOsvald NitzkycompanyMcCord

The tape

3 quotes
I wouldn't say that open source model improvements cannibalize our core business because data is most valuable on the frontier of model performance.
Osvald Nitzky
So, each of our customers has their own unique goals and is purchasing eval and training data sets to fill gaps in current model capabilities.
Osvald Nitzky
Open models just raise the floor of what people are interested in. As long as customers still have new capabilities that they want to get better at, our business still continues to grow.
Osvald Nitzky
Heard on The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) — “20VC: Mercor CPO on Revenue Concentration from Frontier Labs | Why Large Enterprise is Scared to Partner with Frontier Labs | Why Small Specialised Models is the Future with Osvald Nitski, published Saturday, July 25, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
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McCord CTO: Open Source Models Don't Cannibalize Core Business, But Raise the Floor — Heardvine