Mozilla CTO: Open Source and Open Weight AI, Rent or Own?

Open models now trail the best closed models by a few points at a fraction of the price, yet large companies put them into production less often than closed ones. Join me for a live, interactive discussion where Mozilla’s CTO, Raffi Krikorian, explains when to rent AI and when to own it.

In June, after a government export order, the newest frontier models went offline for almost three weeks for every company that rented them. Since then, executives have had to ask what happens when an AI model they rent is switched off. In Episode 933, I talk with Raffi Krikorian, Chief Technology Officer at Mozilla, about what open source and open weight models are, where they beat closed models and where they do not, and how an executive decides what to rent and what to own.

Krikorian is Mozilla’s first portfolio-wide CTO. Mozilla publishes the State of Open Source AI report, which measures how open models compare with closed ones on capability, price, and production use; its second edition came out in September. He also tests open models against his own work and writes up the results on his Substack. This is his second CXOTalk appearance; he first joined in May.

What Raffi will discuss:

What open source AI models are, and how open source differs from open weight
Where open models are winning and where frontier models are better, from Mozilla’s State of Open Source AI report
When to rent AI from a closed provider, when to own an open model, and the economics of each
The risks and limits of open models: procurement and compliance, models from Chinese labs, and the line on what should be open
Lock-in beyond the model: the memory, tools, and data around it, and how companies keep an exit open
Open source AI as a board-level issue, and the questions boards should ask

Join this interactive session with Raffi Krikorian live on Friday, October 9, 2026, at 1:00 PM ET on CXOTalk.

The conversation is live, and your questions are part of it. Ask Raffi anything in the LinkedIn Live chat, or on X with the hashtag #cxotalk and @mkrigsman, and I will bring your questions into the discussion.

JOIN LIVE AND ASK QUESTIONS

Friday, October 9
10am PT / 1pm ET / 7pm CEST

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EPISODE PARTICIPANTS

Raffi Krikorian is Chief Technology Officer at Mozilla, where he leads technology across Mozilla’s portfolio and its open source AI strategy. He earlier led Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, served as the first CTO of the Democratic National Committee, and ran platform engineering at Twitter.

Michael Krigsman is a globally recognized analyst, strategic advisor, and industry commentator known for his deep expertise in business transformation, innovation, and AI leadership.