The 90/10 split between open-source-suitable and frontier-requiring enterprise workflows is wrong — the real opportunity is in latent demand for long-horizon tasks that nobody is even trying to do with models yet, and the frontier models today only handle about 50% of those.
Oswald rejects the common framing that 90% of enterprise workflows are handled by open models. He argues that latent demand for long-horizon tasks (like fully autonomous procurement agents) is unaccounted for, and even frontier models only score ~50% on these complex workflows in Mercor's benchmarks. ✦ AI generated
Oswald Nitski · 20VC · 2026-07-25 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 2:32
“If 90% of enterprise workflows can be done with open models, does that not make it harder to make revenue from the remaining 10%?”
I'm not convinced that 90% of enterprise workflows can be handled by open models or frontier models right now. We think that these calculations might be based off of existing demand or things that come top of mind when current model users are thinking about what models could do, but there's a whole category of latent demand that people aren't even trying to do with models yet. Most commonly we think these are long horizon tasks like setting up a procurement agent to fully automate your procurement team for months on end. You only check on it maybe once a week. We think that's just not even captured in these calculations when someone says enterprise workflows are being handled because nobody's trying to do these things yet. The market for data to support those use cases is growing and that's where we see a lot of the leaders moving to.
verbatim transcript · starts at 2:32
2:33enterprise workflows can be handled by open models or frontier models right now. Uh, we think that the these calculations might be based off of existing demand or things that, um, come top of mind when uh, current model users are thinking about models could do, but there's a whole category of latent demand that people aren't even, these are things that people aren't even trying to do with models yet. Uh, most
2:58commonly we think these are like long horizon tasks like setting up a procurement agent to fully automate your procurement team for months on end. You only check on it maybe once a week. We think that's just not even captured in these calculations when someone says, you know, enterprise workflows are being handled because nobody's trying to do these things yet. The market for data to support those use cases is growing and
3:20that's where we see a lot of the the leaders moving to. >> Okay, so we see a lot of leaders moving that and seeing new capabilities that they never thought existed. But then we have like Alex Karp in I thought a rather sedate performance. Normally he jumps up and down much more, but I mean it was still rather energetic. Uh, where he said about the incredible skepticism
3:39we see from large enterprises towards data and sharing data with the frontier model providers. To what extent do you see skepticism and fear from large enterprises in working with frontier model companies? >> We see it depend on the uh specific workflow and how core it is to the business. Things that are just like general things that every company needs to do like HR, procurement, it can be less sensitive