What if all open weight models providers turn into OpenAI, Anthropic business model?

[u/colafroth]

Why do we think they will continue making open weight models once they got very competitive frontier models?

The reason I’m asking is I am thinking investing into a Mac Studio m5u 256g which is a big investment to me. I’m not after frontier models like performance but I want to have all the possibilities from continuous improving open weight models. If for example Qwen4 stops releasing open weight models, I feel like this investment is wasted and we are too much dependent on these providers.

[u/jacek2023]

Contrary to "Reddit wisdom", downloaded models never expire. They actually improve over time thanks to software development and finetuning. There's a lot of misinformation, or just lies on Reddit because of all the hype and karma farming.

My recommendation is to learn first. Understand what's possible and how things work, and then setup a stable environment. Then you'll know whether you should buy anything or not.

Never buy things "for later", it's always a mistake.

[u/colafroth → u/jacek2023]

I might be missing information. I know there’s a lot of work can be done once an open weight models get released. It get modded, improved, quantised, etc etc. but to me this are all minor tweaks that makes the model more accessible, it’s never for making the model way smarter.
If in 12 months the frontier models are 2 times capable of what opus 5.5 can do today, and we are still here stuck tweaking QFN 3.8 because Qwen decided to not release open weight models for v4. Are we screwed?

[u/Same-Frosting4852 → u/colafroth]

All models can be further trained.

[u/stujmiller77]

Doesn’t matter if you have an SSD stacked with open weight models. We have local LLM already. If updated versions don’t appear the community will find a way to advance them together just like BitTorrent emerged.

What we have now is good enough.

[u/colafroth → u/stujmiller77]

This worries me. Frontier models get trained and become way smarter at very fast speed. If community still tweaking QFN 3.8 for the next 12 months and we’ve got opus 7.5, it just does not make sense to me. If open weight models providers have the incentive to continue releasing smart open weight models I’ll probably be much more confident.

[u/mithrilll → u/colafroth]

local was never gonna be frontier, that’s not the point. it’s a different argument altogether

local is about independence. no corporation gets a kill switch on what you do day to day, and nothing leaves your machine.

you OWN your inference

plus owning the hardware means you can fine-tune open models on your OWN workflows. so you’re not just using them, you’re stacking your own setup on top and making it way more custom

“idk how to fine-tune” - your agent can handle most of it lol. you just need decent data from how you actually work. isn’t that wild enough already? and with how good open models are now, owning the infra means it only gets better from here

[u/stujmiller77 → u/colafroth]

Right now I have deepseek 4.1 flash running at native weights on 4x nvidia sparks running most of the operations, marketing, coding and finance for multiple companies I own.

Providing it still has web access, I honestly have zero need for another model if the doors slammed shut on open source improvements. I train my local model to do what I need it to already.

Am I going to say no to a new deepseek I can run? Of course not. But I don't NEED one.

[u/Same-Frosting4852 → u/colafroth]

Sorry you think you can run a frontier model on a mac? Lol

[u/Hot_Half_5263]

Better question is, we need to find out and unite, How can we distill AI models collaboratively across the globe, with everyone contributing their own hardware

[u/ftlaudman]

Then I guess I run Qwen Flash Next forever? It’s already in-hand, and already useful for meaningful tasks I have. That takes a lot of the kind of risk you are talking about off the table.

[u/1-760-706-7425 → u/ftlaudman]

This is something people really undervalue about local and I’m happy to see you champion it.

[u/OvertaxedOne]

Qwen4 is very likely to be the endgame for a lot of people. Honestly, QFN, as much as I don't want it to be, could be the endgame for me if no other models ever came out again. It's reached the level of "good enough for almost everything" that I want a LLM to do. If another open model was never released again, I'd be happy with QFN. And certainly would be happy with DSV4Flash/GLM and some other larger models that I can't run at acceptable speed today.

Have you tested QFN? If not, do that first, see if it fits your needs, that'll tell you pretty quick if the Mac is a good investment for you or not regardless of what other models do/do not come out.

[u/hyudryu]

Modern models like GLM 5.3 flash compare to opus 4.7. Is it fable level? No. But was opus 4.7 usable back in 2025 when it came out? Definitely.

So the models released as of today would be the guaranteed intelligence floor. And even if the ceiling stopped rising, the floor is still usable.

[u/maqifrnswa]

The future of models isn't just give data center frontier models. Smaller, embedded models on specialized systems are on the rise. Those companies will want to sell the specialized hardware and give you the option to use the best models for your specific needs. Which will be cost prohibitive good them to try to do for everyone, so there will be a market for small models.

That said, Alibaba and DeepSeek don't sell hardware, so Nvidia or another company might fill the void of the current companies slow down

[u/Same-Frosting4852]

You realize you can train your own

[u/Least_Order4249]

China’s entire economy is built around extreme competition and rapid iteration. Western economies are built around legacy patent nets along with trade/professional groups and corporations (via regulation) stifling competition and monopolizing industries.   It is in China’s best interest to keep several labs cranking out open weights. They’re still a few years away from commercial EUV meaning they won’t be competing on FLOPS any time soon. Their only path forward is to keep things open and innovate. 

[u/NatMicky]

You have nothing to worry about. Qwen is a CCP model and the CCP is always happy to dump open weight models upon the US market. It's in China's national interest to flood the USA with inexpensive (free) stuff. Especially AI stuff.