- AI companies are moving beyond a simple race over who has the biggest or newest model.
- Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says the real product is becoming the system that chooses which model to use for each task.
- Benchmark’s Peter Fenton says open-weight models could soon handle most AI usage, putting pressure on the economics of the biggest model providers.
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“The model alone is no longer the product,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC. “It is the harness, the orchestration system that puts the model inside a very capable harness and pairs the model with a lot of tools.” ...
The emergence of alternative models comes as corporate America tightens its belt on AI spending, and presents another challenge for OpenAI and Anthropic, which have flourished over the past few years by selling the most cutting-edge technology. ...
Perplexity this week previewed a new system for its computer-use product built around GLM 5.2, an open model from China’s Z.ai. The system is designed to let a cheaper model handle more of the work while calling in a stronger model only when needed. ...
The rise of open models also creates a strategic challenge for the U.S. Many of the most competitive open-weight models are coming from Chinese labs, including Z.ai and DeepSeek. That has made open-source AI a business issue, a policy issue and a national competitiveness issue. ...
See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/10/the-ai-race-is-shifting-from-bigger-models-to-cheaper-smarter-systems.html