A Beginner's Guide to AI Matt Hicks of Red Hat on Why AI Needs Its Railroad Barons
Sep 24, 2025
Matt Hicks, CEO of Red Hat, shares his insights on AI and the importance of open source technology. He explains how Red Hat enables businesses to adopt AI seamlessly across various platforms. The discussion covers the balance between building models and operationalizing them, as well as the necessity of keeping data private, likening it to a railroad system. Matt also emphasizes the significance of leaders understanding AI and the risks firms face if they don't embrace these technologies. He champions a hybrid approach to open-source models and highlights industries that are rapidly adopting AI.
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Platform Focus Over Model Ownership
- Red Hat positions itself as a platform to run AI models on any hardware and close gaps for enterprise use.
- The company focuses on letting customers use models where data and latency constraints require on-prem or edge deployments.
Two Races: Models And Infrastructure
- Two parallel races exist: building the most capable models and running them reliably at scale.
- Red Hat focuses on the plumbing to run models in the places customers need, enabling network effects.
Choose Models By Fit, Not Brand
- Use a combination of large proprietary frontier models for reasoning and smaller trainable open-source models for volume and precision.
- Choose models by fit: latency, cost, trainability and governance needs guide the mix.