Explore the live Open Weight Power Atlas here:
In my last Second Order analysis “Who Can Afford to Make Intelligence Cheap”, I thought through how open models don’t necessarily reduce/eliminate market power. The change the concentration through which this power gets captured.
Continuing developments in this space led me to want to keep testing so I built out the Open-Weight Power Atlas to keep an eye out on the topic - if capable models increasingly proliferate, become open-weight and interchangeable, where does the scarcity and so power, move?
The Atlas is a visual map of relevant open-weight model families. I use it to represent and understand which model families are becoming infrastructuer, which capability breakthroughs are actually converting into ecosystem gravity, how portable is intelligence really, who benefits when these models proliferate, and where the re-dependencies form around them.
Open Weight Power Atlas
I’ve started with about 50 active model families and five different ways of looking at the structure.
Gravity: Which families are becoming infrastructure?
Conversion: Which technically strong models are actually accumulating ecosystem power?
Liquidity: Does downloadable really mean movable?
Power: If the model becomes cheaper, which scarce assets will benefit?
There’s also Motion - which I’ll update about once a month - what’s changed, the mechanism, and what I’m watching next.
This is definitely not a model leaderboard, there’s a lot of really good places for that which I use often. I’m really interested in the structure around these models. For example, open weights can broaden the access, while gravity still concentrates around a few families. A sovereign model can create good local capability but retain upstream dependency. A model publisher may give away intelligence because the thing it actually monetizes is silicon, cloud, devices or distribution (complements). I’m trying to make more of these relationships visible in the Atlas.
I’d love for folk who work around models, AI Infrastructure, investment, or Enterprise to give it a try and tell me which of the filters/lenses gave you the most useful insight, and things to watch for in the next monthly update. So it helps me understand how to evolve it next.
Pallavi Chari, Moving Parts