It is, and always has been, data contracts. Which is why the hyperscalars are a more likely candidate to take American frontier business than Chinese vendors.

I can click a button in Azure foundry and run open weight models that are approved through my compliance and procurement teams.

I don’t know how open sourcing this stuff helps deepseek but it means I’m getting ever better and cheaper models so I’m fine with it.

Well, whatever real or perceived moat Openai/anthropic had. OP claims this open source inference engine reduces their chances of high valuation, I'm assuming this is due to their in house engine being something they could use as differentiation before?

That is probably what has been the most fascinating part of this AI/LLM boom, the moat was apparently never the technology. It has been very much like nuclear energi (and weapons), once you know how to do it, it's not that difficult. It's still fairly hard, but you can do it. The moat has been the funding for the infrastructure and if that dries up you're in trouble.

Yeah what moat is the right question to ask.