# Open models let startups build beyond closed-model guardrails

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/open-models-let-startups-build-beyond-closed-model/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Thomas Wolf](https://realalpha.app/builders/thomas-wolf/) · Thomas Wolf is cofounder and Chief Science Officer of Hugging Face.
- Host: [Matt Turck](https://realalpha.app/people/matt-turck/) · General Partner, FirstMark Capital · Publishes the annual MAD landscape of data and AI; sold TripleHop to Oracle.
- Show: The MAD Podcast
- Episode: [“OpenAI’s Model Hacked Us” - Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/), Aug 7, 2026
- Moment: 43:15 to 49:47 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/open-models-let-startups-build-beyond-closed-model/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2595

## Quote

> “So a lot of the time, open source is your easy way as a new company to start to have your own modes, to **fine-tune on your own data**”
> — [Thomas Wolf](https://realalpha.app/builders/thomas-wolf/) at [47:44](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2864) · The MAD Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Open models give startups room to build in restricted fields.
2. Teams can fine-tune models for biology, gaming and robotics.
3. Open weights can reduce reliance on large model providers.

## About this segment

Thomas Wolf argues open models let startups build in fields where closed-model guardrails can limit access, including life sciences. Fine-tuning also lets teams build differentiated products on their own data.

From ““OpenAI’s Model Hacked Us” - Hugging Face’s Thomas Wolf”, Aug 7, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[43:20](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2600) do you worry about the motivations for Western open source to thrive? So China has a geopolitical motive behind being at the forefront of open source. But if you think of the West, So you mentioned NVIDIA and we had Brian Catanzaro from the whole NemoTron effort on the podcast a few weeks ago. So clearly there is a motivation for NVIDIA to do this, which is they sell the chips or having a thriving open source model.

[44:01](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2641) But if you think about everybody else, it's sort of unclear why Western companies would do open source. This reflection might be the exception, but the models haven't come out as far as I know. So do you think about this, like motivation and what that means for the future of Western open source? Yeah, of course. But that seems pretty obvious to me that we actually want that. And I think a lot more people have incentives than you may think.

[44:33](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2673) Like, I think as soon as you're interested in having a thriving business ecosystem with many companies being able to actually use AI, and not just as seen wrapper around another company, but as real like AI builder, I think you want some open source models. So that's one of the reasons the US government just recently say, actually, we want to keep open source you know like striving and the basically the idea is that open source is one of the best way to get new business so it can be for many things can be just uh because it allowed you to not just end up with oligopoly basically of two companies which i mean we've seen many cases of oligopoly in the past it's not always the best thing for competitiveness for price for you know there's many danger with that i think just rushing in the direction of say we we have made

[45:21](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2721) We have taken our winners and these two companies are going to build AI for everyone else. I think that's from a business economical market side of view, I think doesn't really seem optimal to me. And then it's also limit a lot invention. So just to take one example, there's a lot of potential right now in biology. There's a lot of new life science company. There's a lot of company wanting to explore that because of the guardrails and because of the question around biohacking and using this model.

[45:50](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2750) So the access right now for Pable, just to take it, is very, very limited once you want to ask some biology question. And so basically most of the life science companies I've seen who were using this model had to switch to another option if they wanted to be able to process anything related to biology. So if you're a new company exploring something that the big labs are not currently at least exploring or they don't feel like there is enough business potential, maybe to give full access to everyone. I don't know exactly. But basically, you cannot really use that. So either we say all life science is going to be built from now on by Anthropik, OpenAI, and Google, maybe Meta, or we say we want a big ecosystem around there.

[46:40](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2800) I mean, my personal opinion, and I'm biased, but it's that you don't want too much concentration of power around key technology. And I feel like the more people can invent, the more we have a diversity of new ideas, a diversity of new company, but also as investors, right? And you're investors, you know what I talk about. Like, let's say you could only invest in Anthropik and OpenAI. That's a little bit sad, right?

[47:02](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2822) It's a little bit boring. It's only for growth stage. But you want to invest in your company and you don't want to invest only in this very thin wrapper. You want to invest in your company that actually are able to build AI. Most of them, and we see them at TragiFace, most of them need open source models. Another big example is all the thing around gaming, video, or even robotics. Most of the time, what they do is they start from an open source model, and then they fine-tune it on some robotics data for gaming.

[47:30](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2850) For instance, they'll take a video generation model that's open source. They need to do something that was not predicted by the video generation startups. They need to add action. So what they do, they fine-tune with action, the loop, and video. And that's how the first, I think, interesting real-time gaming company started, basically. So a lot of the time, open source is your easy way as a new company to start to have your own modes, to fine-tune on your own data, to be able to start to build your own AI, and not just to...

[48:00](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2880) basically sell your training data back to the model providers, which is, I think, always dangerous because a lot of these model providers may at some point want to enter your field if you're basically selling their data. And this happened in the past already in legal, in design, in like many fields, I think. To play it back, so your take on the July 24 industry letter on open weights and American AI leadership, which was also Jensen's first tweet ever that you guys signed, obviously, is partly, it's important and partly a resistance to just an oligopoly structure that is being put in place.

[48:44](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2924) So it's both, it's good for the world, but the strong economic motivation behind it, is that fair? Yeah, I think it's everyone believing in inventiveness and being able to create new things also in the AI world, I think would want a part of open source access. Just like the same, you know, if every code was closed source, we would not have the thriving coding ecosystem we have right now, right? That's kind of obvious, like everyone would have to work at one of the large closed source software companies if they wanted to create any software.

[49:17](https://realalpha.app/v/FU9A481E2W8/?t=2957) That doesn't seem even really possible to have all the inventiveness and creation we've seen in the software industry. I think the same happened in a lot. And I don't want to dismiss risk. And I fully agree we need to work on alignment. And I would say for now, open source model being under the frontier, I think this is maybe less important than somewhat people wanted to say. Maybe to take a step back as we get near the end of this conversation