Podbit · The a16z Show
Distillation is a universal practice across every AI lab — calling it theft while being the world's fastest-growing company is hard to take seriously. Clément Delangue argues that stopping distillation won't kneecap Chinese AI, and that Anthropic and OpenAI need more competition, not less protection.
Where this was said
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Before the intro even rolls, Clément Delangue is already making his most provocative argument of the episode. Distillation — using a more capable model's outputs to train a smaller one — is universal practice across every AI lab, he says, and accusing competitors of it while being the world's fastest-growing company rings hollow. The more urgent threat, in his telling, isn't a few billion dollars of lost revenue: it's a future where a small number of companies control all AI capability, infrastructure, and economic output. This cold open functions as a thesis statement for the entire conversation, setting up the competition and power-concentration themes that run through every subsequent topic.
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