Analysis: AI Model Market to Split into Three Tiers with Massive Potential in Customized Open Weights
ypatil125 · x · 2026-08-08
In his newsletter, Jamin Ball analyzes the future of the AI model/token market, identifying three major emerging tiers: frontier closed models, vanilla open weights, and customized open weights. The author argues that despite competition, the overall market is growing so rapidly that all segments will see growth in the short term.
The article highlights the third tier—customized open weights. While the trend of fine-tuning open-source models (via SFT or RL) on proprietary data to achieve cheaper, specialized models is strong, the practical implementation remains harder than most anticipate.
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