What if a free open-weights model matches the closed flagships?
A free open-weights model matching closed flagships collapses proprietary pricing power, pressuring Nvidia and capex on softer monetization plus high-beta crypto. Direct analogue is DeepSeek Jan-2025 and the Llama-3/Mistral open-weights wave that compressed closed-model pricing. Skeptic's note: open weights still need GPUs to run, so this hits closed-lab economics far more than silicon demand — the de-rating belongs on software multiples, not Nvidia volumes.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A free open-weights model matches closed flagships on key benchmarks, collapsing proprietary-model pricing power. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — AI capex ▼ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.