Enterprises are more nervous about frontier (US) model providers than Chinese models due to greater confusion over data policies, storage, and inability to run models on their own infrastructure.
Alex Atallah states that when speaking to customers, enterprises are typically more concerned about using frontier models from US labs than about using Chinese models. The key reasons are opaque data policies, uncertainty about data storage and access, and the inability to host models on their own infrastructure. ✦ AI generated
Alex Atallah · 20VC · 2026-08-10 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 34:17
“What do you think US companies are more nervous of, frontier models or Chinese models?”
I think they're they're more nervous about frontier models usually. Part because there's just like a a much there's much more confusion around the data policy about what's like actually happening to the prompts they're sending and um where they're being stored and how they're being looked at. Um and you can't run them on your own machine or in a provider of your choice. Uh and so that just immediately creates all of this uncertainty in a lot of enterprises.
verbatim transcript · starts at 34:17
34:17models? >> I think they're they're more nervous about frontier models usually. Part because there's just like a a much there's much more confusion around the data policy about what's like actually happening to the prompts they're sending and um where they're being stored and how they're being looked at. Um and you can't run them on your own machine or in a provider of your choice. Uh and so that just immediately creates
34:46all of this uncertainty in a lot of enterprises. And [snorts] it's uncertainty that they can also pattern match. It's very similar to like you know, running on their own infra versus running in their VPC. Um and and knowing like who can see the data. Um so like >> exactly? Like they're more nervous of like US companies headquartered in Silicon Valley where you can see and touch and
35:13feel the headquarters and the leaders. It's just like what a strange world to be in. >> Yeah, it it is very strange especially with these with the frontier models like doing the like having the biggest cyber posture right now. Like the the Um they're doing the best at cyber. >> company kind of posturing haha we hacked someone? First you had OpenAI, then you had Anthropic, and then you had Zuck
35:37coming out I don't want to miss the party we did too. >> Yeah, well I think they have they they have to talk about it. Like the right thing to do is to reveal when there's been a cyber incident involving your model. Um covering it up doesn't work. Or it's not going to work in the long term. And it certainly looks like they're all bragging about it. Um but really if you