Enterprises will increasingly want AI sovereignty — owning their whole AI supply chain — because in the age of AI software is no longer a moat, while data and network effects are, and companies will not want to hand their data to a third party that may one day compete.
Anastasios argues AI sovereignty is inevitable because businesses need a moat: software can be produced instantaneously, but data moats and network effects endure. Companies can take open-source models, fine-tune them on their own data, and own their stack to avoid cost, sovereignty, and supply-chain concerns. ✦ AI generated
Anastasios · 20VC · 2026-08-03 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 5:57
“So, do you believe that is the future? We had Lynn on from Fireworks and she was like the specialized intelligence will be the future.”
Enterprises are going to want to own their own intelligence. They're going to want so-called AI sovereignty, which is a fancy word for meaning that you own your whole supply chain of AI. That means you can take an open-source model and you can fine-tune it on your own company's data and own your stack end to end basically outside of the compute hosting. ... In the age of AI, software is no longer really a moat because it can be produced instantaneously, right? Or let's project out five years. That's what's going to happen. And so what modes exist? Network effects exist and data modes exist. And if you can take your data mode and turn it into a self-improving product that is a way for businesses to remain sustainable in the age of AI. ... People are going to care about sovereignty. People are going to care about cost. People are going to care about self-improving. and they're not necessarily going to want to give their data to an external third party service that might even be competing with them one day.
verbatim transcript · starts at 5:57
5:57they're being completely cannibalized right now by Chinese open source models. These models are still only a small fraction of the total inference spend in the world. That said, think about what's happening in the future. Enterprises are going to want to own their own intelligence. They're going to want so-called AI sovereignty, which is a fancy word for meaning that you own your whole supply chain of AI. That
6:21means you can take an open- source model and you can fine-tune it on your own company's data and own your stack end to end basically outside of the compute hosting. And so then you should be able to run it within your your own company. People are going to care about sovereignty. People are going to care about cost. People are going to care about self-improving. and they're not
6:40necessarily going to want to give their data to an external third party service that might even be competing with them one day. >> So, do you believe that is the future? We had Lynn on from Fireworks and she was like the specialized intelligence will be the future. Companies will have their own fine-tuned specialized models with their own company data and the performance will be better and that is
6:58what will happen. Do you think that's right or is that actually just a small subset of very advanced Silicon Valley companies and the known yogurts and every normal company would just use Frontier whatever? >> Well, I'll say it like this. I think the business incentives make this inevitable and the reason is because businesses are going to need a way of keeping a moat. In the age of AI,