Masters in Business · Friday, September 18, 2026
Glen Kacher notes the growing competition from open-source AI models, which are cheaper and customizable, challenging closed models from Anthropic and OpenAI. He highlights the regulatory challenges in controlling open-source AI due to its distributed nature.
“The real battle that's emerging today is open source models that, one, are cheaper than the closed, anthropic, and open AI models. because they're free. You can download them for free and run them on local hardware, or you can engage with them on others' commodity hardware in the sky.”
“And those open-source solutions are really battling these more expensive frontier models from the two big companies. So we will see. I think the early signals are that... There's a place for both of these solutions broadly defined. There's also some regulatory questions, open models. You really can't regulate very well because you can install them on your own software. You can adjust them to work how you want. There's questions about how to make sure these are engaged safely and in the wild.”