Interconnects Open models: Hot or Not with Nathan Lambert & Florian Brand
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Dec 18, 2025 Florian Brand, an open model analyst, joins Nathan Lambert for a fiery debate on the evolving landscape of open models. They dive into which labs have gained or lost momentum, tackling the fall of Llama and Huawei's controversial model repackaging. The duo explores the significance of big tech involvement, evaluates chaotic open releases, and predicts the future of GPT-OSS. They also discuss the balance between American and Chinese models, highlighting the rise of underdogs and the impact of coding performance on adoption.
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Open Models Reached A Saturation Point
- The open-model ecosystem matured rapidly in 2025 with many niche players gaining attention.
- Nathan Lambert warns the space feels saturated and less likely to have one dramatic breakout next year.
Big Firms Are Loud But Patchy
- Large incumbents like NVIDIA and IBM play noisy but inconsistent roles in open models.
- Florian Brand highlights IBM's early work on separate reasoning modes despite weak publicity.
Small-Team Model Beats Frontier
- Nathan praises Moondream as an unexpected high-performer from a tiny team.
- He recounts the creator training small vision models on five GPUs that outperform larger frontier models.