Most customers don't need the biggest baddest models, just ones that work, are cheap, and won't pirate their proprietary data

FEATURE Spring has sprung and that means another wave of open weights AI models from the likes of Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, and Nvidia. But this time feels a bit different.

In the past, these models have felt a bit like toys: research projects and proofs of concept that, while impressive for their size or innovation, still fell far short of OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google's top models.

But Qwen 3.5, Google's Gemma 4, and Microsoft's MAI speech and image models are a bit different. These models feel less like proofs of concept and more like enterprise products.

"We've moved from interesting to now serious enterprise platforms," Andrew Buss, senior research director at IDC, told El Reg.

The models underscore a stark reality: the gulf between enterprise and frontier AI has grown considerably over the past few years, and the mower powerful models are beyond the means ...