An NEA partner says not every AI task needs frontier intelligence

Aaron Jacobson, a partner at NEA, believes open ecosystems are good enough. Prosek Partners NEA partner Aaron Jacobson thinks companies don't need to pledge allegiance to frontier models. He says that for a growing number of tasks open-weight models are "good enough." "I think the next decade is going to be defined by efficient use of models," he told BI. The AI race is getting more complicated. Despite the hype around the latest and biggest frontier models , companies are finding they don't always need the most powerful approach for every task. As open-weight models get better, cheaper, and easier to customize, there’s more pressure on frontier model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to develop features that retain customers. That's creating a new set of tradeoffs for businesses between cost, control, and security.