The a16z Show · Saturday, September 5, 2026
Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, believes that open-weight AI models are crucial for driving innovation and expanding the AI ecosystem. He argues that framing open-weight AI as a threat to closed-model providers is a misinterpretation of the economics, as open models actually increase the number of use cases and push closed models to innovate faster.
“the reason why open weight AI is super important is because it actually drives AI progress.”
“It actually adds to the the number of use cases that people then do with AI.”
“So, I think everybody is sort of a winner as a result of open weights.”