2023, The Rise of On-Prem LLMs

In 2021, AI ate HPC, but that news affected only the AI community and went mostly unnoticed by the general public. 2022 saw many upheavals, not least the release of ChatGPT. Unlike GPT-3 in 2020, the release of ChatGPT registered at the level of a world event. That event showed that a powerful Large Language Model (LLM) tuned to human feedback and an intuitive UI changed the game in AI.

And here come the new interesting opportunities and new challenges:

For one, knowledge workers in all verticals are being served more uniformly. This is new. What traditionally was considered compartmentalized internal company know-how is now being uniformly funneled over to a partner API.

More importantly, data fed into the partner API may produce more powerful and capable partner LLMs. And then, the ease by which prompt retro-engineering can be undertaken sends a clear message: simply running a business on top of a partner LLM cannot be a moat for long unless you own the LLM or the partner!

Because data is text and everyone in the company can and wants to use it, whoever controls the LLM, controls the know-how of that company. In other words, the LLM has become a core strategic asset of the company using it.

At LightOn, we provide moats to companies by offering them the ability to host powerful LLMs on their infrastructure so they can retain their know-how and remain competitive. If you are interested in hearing more about this opportunity, get in touch!

Happy New Year 2023, and Good Luck!