# Hugging Face's Irene Solaiman discusses costs and risks of building on open AI models

> Original title: Building on open source AI? Hugging Face’s policy chief on the costs, risks, and trade-offs

- Source: TechCrunch · AI
- Published: 2026-11-04T18:44:57.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/ieuwa8r74b15ogq3kqzvjbkyi
- Original: https://techcrunch.com/podcast/building-on-open-source-ai-hugging-faces-policy-chief-on-the-costs-risks-and-trade-offs/

## Summary

TechCrunch's Equity podcast interviews Irene Solaiman, Hugging Face's Chief Policy Officer and SVP of Strategy, on what startups should know before building on open models. The episode covers when cheaper open models make sense over the most powerful ones, who captures value when models are free, and whether the U.S. needs a well-funded open frontier model to compete with China.