What happens if China pulls the plug on open-source AI? | Ep 21

<p><strong>This Week In Startups is made possible by:</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>PAYPAL</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Today’s show:</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>China is weighing a ban on foreign access to its top AI models… the same low-cost open-weight systems on which half of the Valley’s startups are building. So we asked our two all-star panelists — Arena CEO/Co-Founder Anastasios Angelopoulos and Hippocratic AI CEO/Co-Founder Munjal Shah — what happens to US companies when their favorite cheap, powerful models vaporize overnight.</strong></p><p><strong>PLUS why Hippocratic runs 31 models in parallel to ensure clinical-grade safety, the latency-vs-intelligence tradeoff no one is optimizing for, and why a company’s benchmarks might become their most valuable IP.</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Guests:</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Anastasios Angelopoulos on X:</strong><a href="https://x.com/ml_angelopoulos"><strong> https://x.com/ml_angelopoulos</strong></a></p><p><strong>Arena AI:</strong><a href="https://arena.ai/"><strong> https://arena.ai/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Agent Arena:</strong><a href="https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent"><strong> https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent</strong></a></p><p><strong>Munjal Shah on X:</strong><a href="https://x.com/munjalshah"><strong> https://x.com/munjalshah</strong></a></p><p><strong>Hippocratic AI:</strong><a href="https://hippocraticai.com/"><strong> https://hippocraticai.com/</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Relevant Links:</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Reuters: “Beijing is looking at curbing overseas access…”:</strong><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/beijing-is-looking-curbing-overseas-access-chinas-top-ai-models-sources-say-2026-07-07/"><strong> https://www.reuters.com/world/beijing-is-looking-curbing-overseas-access-chinas-top-ai-models-sources-say-2026-07-07/</strong></a></p><p><a href="http://z.ai"><strong>Z.ai</strong></a><strong>:</strong><a href="https://z.ai/"><strong> https://z.ai/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Alibaba’s Qwen:</strong><a href="https://qwen.ai/"><strong> https://qwen.ai/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Google’s Gemma:</strong><a href="https://ai.google.dev/gemma"><strong> https://ai.google.dev/gemma</strong></a></p><p><strong>Reflection AI:</strong><a href="https://reflection.ai/"><strong> https://reflection.ai/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Nvidia: “How Open Models are Driving Research”:</strong><a href="https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/open-models-icml-2026/"><strong> https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/open-models-icml-2026/</strong></a></p><p><strong>DoorDash: “How we learned to trust our AI code reviewer”:</strong><a href="https://careersatdoordash.com/blog/how-we-learned-to-trust-our-ai-code-reviewer-at-doordash"><strong> https://careersatdoordash.com/blog/how-we-learned-to-trust-our-ai-code-reviewer-at-doordash</strong></a></p><p><strong>Harvey AI:</strong><a href="https://www.harvey.ai/"><strong> https://www.harvey.ai/</strong></a></p><p><strong>ElevenLabs:</strong><a href="https://elevenlabs.io/"><strong> https://elevenlabs.io/</strong></a></p><p><strong>Anthropic: “A global workspace in language models”:</strong><a href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace"><strong> https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace</strong></a></p><p><strong>CNN: “Trump rings opening bell to mark first day of trading for Trump Accounts”:</strong><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/business/trump-accounts-launch"><strong> https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/business/trump-accounts-launch</strong></a></p><p><strong>Brown University Health:</strong><a href="https://www.brownhealth.org/"><strong> https://www.brownhealth.org/</strong></a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Timestamps:</strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>0:00 Will US companies lose access to Chinese models?</strong></p><p><strong>1:42 Open source makes running 31 models viable</strong></p><p><strong>5:01 How deep is the West&#39;s open source bench?</strong></p><p><strong>13:20