Who wins when the frontier slows?

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Hello reader,

The same people who fueled the AI race have recently been the ones pushing to slow it.

First, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made an extraordinary call for labs to slow frontier development as security concerns mount. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk backed him.

Then markets reacted soon after, sending AI “picks-and-shovels” stocks lower, including Asian chipmakers Samsung and SK hynix.

But few expect development to stop. US President Donald Trump swiftly dismissed the idea, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg opposed a coordinated slowdown. South Korea said it could not afford to fall behind either.

Critics say a US slowdown would allow Chinese labs to catch up. Supporters counter that American labs can afford to “pace the frontier” because they control the leading models and much of the compute, while Chinese rivals still rely heavily on distillation.

Even if frontier development continues, however, new model releases could slow as American labs conduct more testing and add safeguards.

To labs in India, Southeast Asia, and Europe, that might look like a rare chance to catch up. Slower releases would give them more time to improve their models and could, in theory, free up computing capacity. That could lower token costs, making AI more affordable and accessible in price-sensitive markets like India and much of Southeast Asia.

But that opportunity may prove illusory. US dominance rests partly on its companies’ control of vast amounts of compute. A slowdown would not weaken that advantage but could reinforce it.

Manoj Sukumaran, an independent AI and chip analyst based in India, says compute could become even scarcer as frontier labs put more resources into making emerging models safer.

The US could also restrict foreign access to powerful models, as it briefly did with Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Hence, the “pacing of frontier development” that Amodei called for is ikely to widen the gap between AI haves and have-nots.

This edition also features an interview with the cofounder of AI startup Flam, fresh off a fundraise.

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