Interconnects AI | Nathan Lambert | Substack

This was my last week at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), where I got the great privilege to work on the Olmo models, to grow, to learn, and to have…

Jun 2 • Nathan Lambert

Open and closed models are on different exponentials

Where marginally higher intelligence drives value, and where it doesn't.

Jun 1 • Nathan Lambert

Some ideas for what comes next, May 2026

Gemini Flash 3.5, Mythos, open-closed balance, America's open-source surge, emerging power struggles and more.

May 26 • Nathan Lambert

Latest open artifacts (#21): Open model bonanza! Gemma 4, DeepSeek V4, Kimi K2.6, MiMo 2.5, GLM-5.1 & others. On CAISI's V4 assessment.

An eventful month with one flagship release after another

May 16 • Florian Brand and Nathan Lambert

How open model ecosystems compound

Further reflections on China's high-participation, open-first AI ecosystem.

May 12 • Nathan Lambert

Interconnects AI

Interconnects AI

The cutting edge of AI, from inside the frontier AI labs, minus the hype. The border between high-level and technical thinking. Read by leading engineers, researchers, and investors.

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Recent posts

Notes from inside China's AI labs

Lessons from my trip to talk to most of the leading AI labs in China.

May 7 • Nathan Lambert

The distillation panic

‘Distillation attacks’ is a horrible term for what is happening right now.

May 4 • Nathan Lambert

Reading today's open-closed performance gap

The complex factors that determine the single evaluation number so many focus on. Plus, how this changes in the future.

Apr 20 • Nathan Lambert

My bets on open models, mid-2026

What I expect to come next and why, focused on the open-closed gap.

Apr 15 • Nathan Lambert

Topics

Roundups of the most cutting edge open models and datasets.

Hear from leading researchers in AI.

Reasoning Models

Discussions of o1, inference time compute, reasoning models, and the likes.

Housekeeping

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Artifacts Log: Monthly recaps of open models

Latest open artifacts (#21): Open model bonanza! Gemma 4, DeepSeek V4, Kimi K2.6, MiMo 2.5, GLM-5.1 & others. On CAISI's V4 assessment.

An eventful month with one flagship release after another

May 16 • Florian Brand and Nathan Lambert

Latest open artifacts (#20): New orgs! New types of models! With Nemotron Super, Sarvam, Cohere Transcribe, & others

New orgs! New types of models! With Nemotron Super, Sarvam, Cohere Transcribe, & others

Mar 30 • Florian Brand and Nathan Lambert

Latest open artifacts (#19): Qwen 3.5, GLM 5, MiniMax 2.5 — Chinese labs' latest push of the frontier

Welcome to the year of the horse!

Mar 3 • Florian Brand and Nathan Lambert

Latest open artifacts (#18): Arcee's 400B MoE, LiquidAI's underrated 1B model, new Kimi, and anticipation of a busy month

Tons of useful "niche" models and anticipation of big releases coming soon.

Feb 2 • Florian Brand and Nathan Lambert

Interviews: Discussions with leading AI researchers

35:35

Dean Ball on open models and government control

Subtle precedents on the future of open models set by the unfolding Anthropic v. Department of War case.

Mar 6 • Nathan Lambert and Dean W. Ball

1:07:41

Why Nvidia builds open models with Bryan Catanzaro

Interconnects interview #17 on the past, present, and future of the Nemotron project.

Feb 4 • Nathan Lambert

1:12:15

Arcee AI goes all-in on open models built in the U.S.

Interconnects interview #16 to celebrate the release of Trinity Large.

Jan 27 • Nathan Lambert

1:17:48

Interview: Ant Group's open model ambitions

Launching a new open model series. Interconnects Interview #15.

Nov 12, 2025 • Nathan Lambert

Interconnects AI

The cutting edge of AI, from inside the frontier AI labs, minus the hype. The border between high-level and technical thinking. Read by leading engineers, researchers, and investors.

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