Sriram Krishnan on Open Source AI's Biggest Week Yet
7/24/202623 min
Sriram Krishnan joins Theo Jaffee and Sofia Puccini just after concluding his tenure as Senior White House Policy Advisor on AI to discuss one of the biggest weeks yet for open-source AI. They unpack the rapid release of models including Kimi K3 and Qwen, why open models are putting pressure on frontier labs, and what it means for pricing, competition, and the future of AI infrastructure.
They also discuss AI policy, distillation, cybersecurity, the role of open-weight models, whether the U.S. should respond to China's growing AI capabilities, and how governments and frontier labs should navigate the next phase of AI development.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSriram Krishnan· Guest0:00
If you kind of bring it back to very business first principles, if you're providing a product of value, capitalism will find a way to make the supply chain work for you. So if you have an open-made model that is providing value, that means that every part of the stack underneath, whether it is a neo cloud, the chip provider, somebody who provides gas turbines or fire suppression, is going to orient itself to provide value. If you're providing a product of value, capitalism will take care of all the rest. If you go look at how the rest of the ecosystem is doing, the growth is pretty strong and spectacular, and I think you're gonna seeing that continue.
Theo Jaffee· Host0:39
Open source AI is moving faster than ever, and the balance of power in the industry may be shifting. In this episode, Theo Jaffee and Sophia Puccini are joined by former White House AI policy advisor, Sriram Krishnan, to unpack what the latest wave of open models means for frontier labs, AI policy, pricing, cybersecurity, and America's position in the global AI race. We are back. We are live with Sriram Krishnan, who just finished his tenure as the senior White House policy advisor on artificial intelligence. Previously, he was a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and held senior roles at Microsoft, Meta, Snap, and Twitter. So Sriram, we're so glad to have you on. Welcome to MTS.
Sriram Krishnan· Guest1:25
Thank you. I've been a fan of everything you folks have been doing for the, you know, last few months and excited

