Open-weight models now trail the closed frontier by ~3 months at a fraction of the cost. When capability commoditizes this fast, the moat moves to reliability, distribution, tooling, and trust.
Karmel Mid-Year Brief · Technology & AI · 2026
In early 2025, the best open-weight AI models trailed the closed frontier by about a year. Today the gap is about three months, at a tenth to a hundredth of the cost per token. When raw capability commoditizes this fast, the moat moves off the weights and onto the stack around them: reliability, distribution, tooling, and trust.
That's the thesis of our new mid-year Technology & AI brief, The Frontier Compresses.
